Russia has been running circles around the naive and narcissistic Obama, and now we get the deaths of close to 300 civilians in a commercial airliner. They intentionally brought down this plane and all Obama does is say ‘tragedy’ a few times then goes off to the pub, off to another fundraiser, off to do anything but actually be a leader.
Everything in the middle east to the Ukraine can be traced back to Russia:
Iran? Russia has assisted its nuclear program for decades. Syria? Russia is Bashar Assad’s arms dealer. Iraq? Russia is sending men and materiel to the central government. Afghanistan? Putin muscled nearby Kyrgyzstan into closing our air base there, crucial for transport, resupply, and reconnaissance in the war against the Taliban. The contretemps between the United States and Germany is the result of Edward Snowden’s breach of national security. Where is Snowden? In Russia, where he has just asked to have his visa renewed. I wonder if Vladimir Putin will say yes.
Then there is Ukraine, where Putin has been driving events since March, when he illegally annexed Crimea. The West thought sanctions would intimidate Putin, would force him into retreat. For a time, he drew down his troops on the Ukrainian border, leaving the fighting in eastern Ukraine to separatists trained, armed, and led by Russian special forces. The West thought it could ignore the situation. A guerrilla war in the east, it was assumed, does not threaten democracy in Kiev. The Ukrainian economy returned to its lethargic equilibrium. The Ukrainians elected a president. President Obama, in his speech at West Point, trumpeted his Ukraine policy as an example of “our ability to shape world opinion” and “isolate Russia.”
Some isolation. Even as Western attention turned to the Middle East, Russia continued to act unimpeded, and the Ukrainian war went on. Recently, when Poroshenko, the new Ukrainian president, retook the city of Sloviansk, Putin’s hand was forced. Russian soldiers reappeared along the border—more than 10,000 at last count. The weapons systems supplied by Russia to the insurgents became more sophisticated. Earlier this week, a rocket brought down a Ukrainian cargo plane. The rocket was fired from Russia. Thursday brought us only the latest unintended consequence of Russia’s war on Ukrainian independence: the destruction of a Malaysian airlines flight carrying 295 souls. The attack is revolting, the loss of life infuriating, but the downing of Flight MH17 is not the first unanticipated outcome of the war Vladimir Putin began in Ukraine. Nor will it be the last.
It gets better:
“I think it was a brilliant stroke,” Hillary Clinton says of the “reset” policy the United States pursued toward Russia when she was secretary of State. She has an odd understanding of brilliance. The “reset” gave us a world where Georgia remains illegally occupied, where Poland and the Czech Republic lack missile defenses, where American parents cannot adopt Russian babies, where Russian bombers fly within 50 miles of the Pacific coast, where Ukraine is sundered, where the prospects for ground war in Eastern Europe are high, where Putin says U.S. sanctions against his cronies will take bilateral relations to a “dead end.”
Putin knew from the start that he was dealing with a weak, vain man. I imagine he was overjoyed on his re-election and Putin has now achieved what his predecessors could only dream about. They have become the Russia Khrushchev yearned for, and its all thanks to one man.
Obama.
Exit quote:
Russian manipulation of narrative and image, of wishful thinking and gullibility, has been such a success that the Obama administration actually believes it has accomplished something. It hasn’t. On the contrary: President Obama has relinquished American standing, neglected America’s responsibilities as the guarantor of international security…Militias and rogue generals in Libya, Hamas versus Israel, Hezbollah and Assad and Iran against Sunni rebels and the Caliphate, the prospect of an Iranian bomb, war in Ukraine, withdrawal from Afghanistan, China bullying its neighbors—such is the extent of global disorder today.
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