August 12, 2013
Russia Makes a Fool Out
of Obama, Over and Over
By Kim Zigfeld
The worst has finally
happened. It took much longer than expected -- nearly two thousand days -- but
Barack Obama's foreign policy has finally collapsed, leaving Americans to gape
slack-jawed at the smoking ruins. Obama has undermined American influence
and honor in ways that will be very difficult to repair.
Writing in the Moscow
Times, Russian attorney Vladimir Berezansky plays the funeral
dirge. He calls Russia's granting of asylum to Edward Snowden a
"Suez moment." By this he means that China and Russia have
effectively burst the bubble of American power in the same way that the U.S.
burst the bubble of French and British power during the Suez crisis. The
latter two nations were never the same afterwards, and, Berezansky argues,
neither will the USA be after Snowden. Watching Obama's helplessness as
these two malignant dictatorships thumb their noses at America reminds one of
nothing so much as the Iran hostage crisis and the Afghanistan invasion, where
Jimmy Carter's presidency ran aground.
Russia went out
of its way to snub and provoke the United States and to humiliate
Obama. It took the minimum amount of time and gave Snowden the maximum
number of benefits available. Russia sent a clear message that it cares
nothing for its relationship with the United States, has no fear of Obama's retaliatory
moves, and believes that there will be none anyway. Obama replied by
making it clear that he would not
impose any tangible sanctions, such as an Olympic boycott, once again
handing another easy victory to Putin.
Leon Aron, the dean of
American Russia watchers, believes
that Obama's feeble response to Russia on Snowden, canceling a scheduled
personal meeting with Putin, was a fatal display of weakness and a national
disgrace. Aron points out that Obama could have refused to attend the
upcoming G-20 summit in Russia, where the meeting was scheduled, or he could
have attended and strongly confronted Putin over what amounts to an act of war
against the United States. Predictably, Obama chose to do neither.
He'll attend the summit, sparing Russian face, but won't meet with Putin
in protest, sparing Putin the post-meeting press conference where Obama calls
him to account. Instead of punishing Putin, Obama is basically doing him
a favor.
Putin did the worst he
could to the U.S. on Snowden, and the U.S. responded with maximum
softness. Obama's message to Putin is clear: grab for more. Russian
political pundits were openly
laughing at Obama's feebleness.
Political Information
Agency General Director Alexei Mukhin told Interfax:
The Soviet Union hosted
the Olympic Games without the Americans in 1980. Nevertheless, everything was
just excellent. Even if Washington makes a similar step during the Sochi
Olympics, this won't mean anything unpleasant for Russia. In 1980, the
Americans were supported by a number of countries, but now this can't be
replayed, because of the EU's position, among other things. It looks
like, in its desire to sting the Russian leadership, Washington has outsmarted
itself in the situation surrounding Snowden. The Barack Obama administration
has behaved like a capricious woman.
Of course, Obama never
thought he'd need to show any
backbone where Russia is concerned, so naturally he's not ready to do so.
His "reset" policy was supposed to turn Russia into a
cooperating partner on issues like Snowden, and it has blown up in his face,
just as his critics predicted it would from the first.
Russia was happy to sign
a nuclear weapons treaty that called on only the USA to cut weapons. When
Obama sought a second round that would actually impose some cuts on Russia,
Putin told him to drop dead.
No progress whatsoever
has been achieved in inducing Iran to abandon nuclear weapons. To the
contrary, Russia not only continues to support Iran, but is now helping Iran
support Syria, and flouting U.S. policy there as well.
Putin has escalated an
appalling crackdown on civil society, which has seen him arrest his leading critic, Alexei Navalny, on clearly
political charges and sentence him to five years at labor. America's
moral leadership in Russia has vanished; America has betrayed those who stand
for its values.
The most utterly
humiliating moment for Obama on Russia, however, has not been on the foreign
policy front. Russia recently passed a law making it illegal for any
homosexual to act gay in public. This law makes gay Olympic athletes subject to arrest in Sochi,
Russia, during the 2014 Winter Olympics scheduled to be staged there. The
Kremlin has said it will
enforce the measures. This has resulted in a furious backlash.
Celebrities from Harvey Fierstein to Steven Fry to Mr. Sulu have openly
called for a boycott, and 88 U.S. congressmen have signed
a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry demanding action. As a
result, Obama faces the lowest moment of his presidency: he must either side
with the gays and follow the path of Jimmy Carter into an Olympic boycott, or
he must side with his "reset" policy and permanently alienate a key
element of his political base. There is no way out.
Everywhere Obama has
turned, Putin has been there to stick a finger in his eye. Just like
Neville Chamberlain, Obama thought the power of his personality could convert a
malignant dictator into a reasonable partner. Just like Chamberlain,
Obama's policy of appeasement has collapsed into humiliating failure, with
devastating consequences for future generations to bear.
Ironically, in a recent
interview with Jay Leno, Obama didn't disagree when Leno accused Putin of
acting like Hitler on the homosexual question. This equation is percolating
throughout the internet these days. Obama's bitterness at being betrayed
by Pooty was palpable. Yet despite acknowledging Putin's evil, Obama is
unable to confront it. He can respond only with confused half-measures
that just make the situation worse. This is precisely the problem Obama's
critics were worried about when he took the Oval Office: his total lack of
foreign policy credentials left him adrift and unable to recognize that his
balloon was losing altitude until it spectacularly crashed.
On internet forums,
Obama's critics have taken to writing his name commencing with the numeral zero
rather than a letter, and that just about sums it up. So far, Obama
hasn't even had the fortitude to fire his ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul,
the architect of the ruinous reset, whose service in Russia has been a Keystone
Cops fiasco from the first moment. When Snowden walked into Moscow,
McFaul should have walked out.
As Hitler could not have
wished for better than Chamberlain, Putin could not have dreamed of more than
Obama. The president won't make the highest
American values part of his relationship with Russia, maybe because he
doesn't share them, and he won't stand up for American values and honor by
making Putin pay dearly for crossing them, maybe because he doesn't care about
them.
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