Obama today ran to the podium using a horrendous crime at a college in Oregon to rail against guns. As traumatic as these insane killings are, when Obama addressed the Nation, barely any information was available from Oregon. What was he up to? Was he throwing a shiny object, gun control, out there for the media to goggle at while, . . . while what?
Well, while Putin is settling into a long term encampment in Syria, and going to war. War! Encampment? OK, well not so much encampment as ‘occupation’. Yes, that’s better — occupation, which in Putin terminology translates to ‘annex’ if his dalliance in, well, annexation of Crimea, is any attestation of intent.
Our piteous media cannot find the words to protect Obama, so it blathers on, inanely attempting to explain something it evidently does not understand as it pears in vain through the eyes of a blundering Administration — what can it possibly be thinking? It’s so very difficult for the media to make sense of lies and obfuscations flowing out of this Administration, but it tries. Putin understands, and furthermore, Putin takes action. He is ruthless — a merciless and sadistic graduate that makes the KGB proud.
Putin now has tanks, drones, bombers, fighter jets, and he has ships in Tartus, Syria, his only naval base in the Mediterranean Sea. Where’s Obama? Oh, is that him hiding behind Kerry? To make sure the world gets the message, China is also ‘acting’, having sent military advisers aboard a naval vessel which will arrive in the coming days. Israeli military news indicates that this Chinese ‘help’ is in the form of Chinese aircraft carrier Liaonig-CV-16.
Instead of backdooring weapons to Syrian rebels as Obama and Clinton attempted in the Benghazi/Turkey-arm-the-Jihadist fiasco, Putin is waging a war directly and unequivocally on all Syrian rebels. Instead of arming some ‘guys’, but not those ‘guys’, and maybe these other ‘guys,’ but we’re not sure because we don’t really know who’s who, Putin is attacking REBELS. But, but, but, Obama says those aren’t the right rebels. No kidding? Apparently now, Obama likes the Al-Quaeda and other rebels and says he doesn’t like those other guys, the ISIS guys. So what of those?
Putin will in time attack all rebels. Why? Because Syria will be his, and he will not stand for rebellion. Remember how he acted on rebels in Chechnya where he destroyed wide swaths of towns killing men, women and children without flinching. Syria will in time no longer be a haven for countless terrorist cells and terror launching pads. There is plenty of lucre awaiting Putin at the end of his campaign.
Syria will be a gateway to energy cash, particularly gas, with Europe, as well as China, waiting in the Mediterranean for the pipeline to deliver the vital energy source flowing out of Iran’s South Pars field.
Europeans had anticipated that Iranian gas coming through an Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline would have provided them a counterbalance against blackmailing at the hands of Putin’s Gazprom. Europe’s hoped-for diversification in now another dream wreaked on the shoals of incompetence and inaction by Obama and the E.U. This was also one of the main reasons why the E.U. went along with Obama’s incomprehensible Iranian deal. European nations needed alternatives to Putin’s oil and gas.
Putin wasted no time with an end-run. He could not retreat, or be seen to retreat from American presence in the region. Facing any other President in the White House, he probably would have, but not this one, given the past six year experience. Can any of us imagine Putin telling a Reagan, “you have one hour to get out, we’re dropping bombs” as he did yesterday to America in Syria? Hardly.
Putin will firmly control Syria. He doesn’t like Assad, but Assad was cornered and available for the taking. Putin already has significant influence in Teheran, and its newfound wealth generously delivered by Obama, will enrich Putin’s coffers as Russia furnishes Iran’s Ayatollah with whatever he wishes, from arms to nuclear technology. Turkey is not surprisingly confused given the unreliability of Obama and its dreams of becoming a regional superpower, perhaps even invading Syria, have evaporated. As for Iraq, it is still ‘in play’ as Obama curls-up on a closet floor of the Oval Office.
Putin has sent an admonition and warning to Obama and to Europe’s leaders — you made a mess of the Middle East, you are weak, you are incompetent, you are not paying attention, and your weakness is going to cost you, but enjoy all the refugees flooding through your borders.
A constituent of the vast baby boomer generation with a career which has been fortunate to know the ponderous corporate worlds, as well as the intimately pressurized, and invigorating entrepreneurial domains of high tech and venture capital, I have harvested my share of mistakes meandering through corridors of enterprise from Silicon Valley, to London and endless, colourful, sometimes praetorian points in between. The voyage has provided an abundance of fodder for a pen yielding to an inquisitive keyboard, a foraging mind, and a passionate spirit.
Whether political or business or social or economic or personal, is it not all political? It is a privilege to write, and an even greater privilege to be read by anyone, and sometimes with the wind at my back the writing may occasionally be legible. I do not write to invite scorn, nor to invite respect, but if I get really lucky the writing can stimulate thinking. I also write for the very selfish purpose of animating my own processes, and engaging the best of what life offers. Above all, whether biting fire or swatting shadows, I am grateful to be gifted the freedom to write and publish whatever flows down to the keyboard. To all those who enabled this freedom, and to all those standing guard to preserve it, I am indebted.