The Charge of the Lightweight Brigade [Obama]
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steynonline
by Mark Steyn
Mar 20, 2014
Excerpt:
I heard the "leader of the free world" on the radio this morning speaking from the White House on Russia's annexation of the Crimea. President Obama's big thought was about the "choices that the Russian government has made". It was delivered in the condescending tone of a grade-school guidance counselor lecturing Little Vladdy on the "bad choices" he kept making, and what's more "choices that have been rejected by..." Stand well back! "...the international community".
Other than that, the President announced he was imposing "sanctions" for more individuals in the Russian government thinking of visiting Disneyland or opening a savings account with the First National Bank of Dead Cactus Junction. If you're one of those so named and your wife's hassling you for a weekend of shopping on Madison Avenue or Rodeo Drive, tough: Obama's put you on the No-Shop list. For anybody in the Kremlin who still bothers watching US government press conferences, the only real danger from American "pressure" is that you may die laughing.
Daniel Henninger begins his Wall Street Journal column this week as follows:
By the time the second World Trade Center tower collapsed on Sept. 11, 2001, the whole world was watching it. We may assume that Vladimir Putin was watching. Mr. Putin, a quick calculator of political realities, would see that someone was going to get hit for this, and hit hard.
He was right of course. The Bush presidency became a war presidency that day, and it pounded and pursued the Islamic fundamentalists of al Qaeda without let-up or apology.
During that time, it was reported that Vladimir Putin, a former KGB officer in East Germany, deeply regretted the fall of the Soviet Union's empire and despised the Americans who caused it to fall. But no one cared what Mr. Putin thought then.
That's true. A couple of days after September 11th, the Bush Administration called Moscow and demanded the Russians agree to letting the US use military bases in former Soviet Central Asia for their planned invasion of Afghanistan. That must have been quite a phone call. Washington was proposing not only to do to the Afghans what the Kremlin has so abysmally failed to do, but to do it out of the Russians' old bases. And yet Moscow understood that, for once, America was serious. And so, presented with a fait accomplis, they agreed to it.
Thirteen years later? Daniel Henninger again:
Sometimes world affairs go off the grid. Diplomats may give reasons why it is not in the interests of Mr. Putin or Russia to take this course. Vice President Biden told the Poles in Warsaw Monday that Mr. Putin's seizure of Crimea was "flawed logic." It is difficult for men embedded in a world of rational affairs to come to grips with Mr. Putin's point of view: He doesn't care what they think.
Indeed. He only cares what they do. And everything Obama does confirms to Putin that the Crimea is his. And, if that's the case, why stop there?
So Putin will march on, reassembling the Russian Empire, while the Obama Administration pursues its own foreign policy priorities:
Secretary Kerry: U.S. To Send Scientists To Discuss Homosexuality With Ugandan President
That's from a State Department "town hall meeting" with John Kerry moderated by Buzzfeed's foreign affairs editor, who asked him about Uganda's "anti-LGBT" policies. The Secretary of State has been in touch with Mr Museveni:
*snip*
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