On Russia: Media peers over rose-colored glasses to see Obama's foreign policy 'fantasy', pandering to lowest common denominator

Are some in the media finally seeing Obama for the Roarke (or Tattoo, whichever Fantasy Island character you'd like to draw comparisons) that this president really is? Not quite...but some are starting to peer over those rose-colored utopian glasses, and understand just how seriously wrong Obama's foreign policy has been...



The dirty little secret lies in that degree of wrongness which applies across the board of Obama policies! It just so happens that Russia is now on the front burner, and even this heat is difficult for the pretorian media to avoid...

WaPo: FOR FIVE YEARS, President Obama has led a foreign policy based more on how he thinks the world should operate than on reality. It was a world in which “the tide of war is receding” and the United States could, without much risk, radically reduce the size of its armed forces. Other leaders, in this vision, would behave rationally and in the interest of their people and the world. Invasions, brute force, great-power games and shifting alliances — these were things of the past. Secretary of State John F. Kerry displayed this mindset on ABC’s “This Week” Sunday when he said, of Russia’s invasion of neighboring Ukraine, “It’s a 19th century act in the 21st century.”

Unfortunately, Russian President Vladimir Putin has not received the memo on 21st-century behavior. Neither has China’s president, Xi Jinping, who is engaging in gunboat diplomacy against Japan and the weaker nations of Southeast Asia. Syrian president Bashar al-Assad is waging a very 20th-century war against his own people, sending helicopters to drop exploding barrels full of screws, nails and other shrapnel onto apartment buildings where families cower in basements. These men will not be deterred by the disapproval of their peers, the weight of world opinion or even disinvestment by Silicon Valley companies. They are concerned primarily with maintaining their holds on power.

...as long as some leaders play by what Mr. Kerry dismisses as 19th-century rules, the United States can’t pretend that the only game is in another arena altogether. Military strength, trustworthiness as an ally, staying power in difficult corners of the world such as Afghanistan — these still matter, much as we might wish they did not. While the United States has been retrenching, the tide of democracy in the world, which once seemed inexorable, has been receding. In the long run, that’s harmful to U.S. national security, too.

As Mr. Putin ponders whether to advance further — into eastern Ukraine, say — he will measure the seriousness of U.S. and allied actions, not their statements. China, pondering its next steps in the East China Sea, will do the same. Sadly, that’s the nature of the century we’re living in.

No, sadly that's the nature of the world! And as long as peace through strength subsides in 'the' superpower, a man like ex-KGB operative Vladimir Putin knows full well that he can get away with rebuilding a Soviet nation, especially when Kerry and Obama are so snowed by their own PR...



And I'm no Romney fan, but remember that last presidential debate? Even the ultra-lib Slate publication admits that Obama got Russia wrong and Romney got it right...

To peer into the conservative media and blogosphere as it covers Russa's invasion of Crimea is to risk a fatal dose of schadenfreude. There are reports about how Sarah Palin totally called that Putin would invade Ukraine (she will be on Fox News tonight to remind us), about how Mitt Romney was unfairly mocked for calling Russia the greatest "geopolitical threat" to the United States, about Hillary Clinton's "reset button" gaffe. Even the Liberal New Republic (tm) has admitted that Mitt Romney was right about the Russians and their ambitions.

And he was. Why did Barack Obama blow it?

Romney was right. Why was Obama wrong? Because, I think, he was willfully blurring the distinction between "geopolitical" and other sorts of threats. He was playing to the cheap seats. Voters do not fear Russia, or particularly care about its movements in its sad, cold sphere of influence. They do care a lot about terrorism. And Obama would use any chance he had, in 2012, to remind voters that he was president when Osama Bin Laden was killed.

So you see the politics—they reveal Obama as the player of a cheap trick.

Time and time again, that cheap trick is repeated on the low-information voter.



Related link: RUSH: Ukraine Is The ‘KGB Versus Acorn’