I have a vision in my mind of Darth Vader addressing a scared Luke Skywalker, who just screwed up by letting slip that Leia was indeed his sister, and coincidentally the daughter of an uncaring Vader. “And now his failure is complete,” really said it all.
As Russia rolls its tanks and troops into Crimea, I am reminded of other events within my life time that saw similar happenings. Not that today’s aggressive behavior is in any way the same as those dark days of the Cold War, when the Soviets sent their military into Poland, Czechoslovakia, Afghanistan, and Chechnya. Today’s act of aggression you see came after the Bamster and Hillary gifted some Russian apparatchik with that famed, “reset button.” Right on cue, our leader’s, (and I use that term loosely,) in Washington are shocked, shocked, I tell you, to learn that the Russians have taken the Obama Administration’s foreign policy as a sign of American weakness.
Charles Krauthammer said it most eloquently in about a minute and a quarter last night.
Here’s the transcript of Krauthammer’s analysis:
Remember the speech he gave at the U.N. when he started his administration? He said no nation can or should dominate another. I mean, there’s not a 12-year-old in the world who believes that. And he said the alignment of nations rooted in the cleavages of the long ago Cold War make no sense in this interconnected world. As our Secretary of State said today, or yesterday, after all this, this is a 19th century action in a 21st century world. As if what he means his actions where governments pursue expansion, territory domination, no longer exist in this century, as if that hasn’t been a constant in all of human history since Hannibal. They imagine the world as a new interconnected world where climate change is the biggest threat and they are shocked that the Russians actually are interested in territory.
The parallels to Jimmy Carter’s foreign policy are too strong to not mention. Carter, like Obama, spent his time as President traveling the globe heaping praise upon America’s adversaries while chiding and ridiculing America’s allies. He too was shocked, shocked, I tell you, to learn that the Soviets would invade Afghanistan when it suited them to do so. I guess that the lesson we can all take from this is the same one we’ve learned every time there’s a Democrat in the White House, which is that the Kumbayah School of foreign policy leads to unmitigated disaster for us and the rest of the world as a whole.
What ever level of intervention you feel United States involvement should exhibit or forgo is not what caused this. What caused this latest example of Russian aggression was what always causes such things. They took a good look at a President with a foreign policy that can be labeled most generously as feckless, and a U.S. Secretary of State who declared that the completely farcical myth of global warming was our nation’s most feared enemy, saw that our Teleprompter in Chief was moving forward with his plans to reduce our military to ashes, and determined quite correctly that we were in no position to defend anyone or anything. Crimea is now paying the price associated with that reality.
yes, for my Russian friends, the Cold War is over and the Russians have eschewed the Socialism that once plagued their economics. Vladimir Putin however is a veteran of the Cold War, and as a former leader of the KGB, it would appear, at least to the casual observer, that bringing back the old Soviet Satellites to an existence within the fold may be one of his objectives. Achieving that end by force is something he is perfectly comfortable with. Our discussions on this particular part of our foreign policy need to accept that reality. Especially since some of the former Soviet Satellites are now member nations of NATO, Ukraine being one of them.
Just one more thing to point out here. Remember how Sarah Palin was so roundly ridiculed for being, “stupid,” when she predicted this exact event way back in 2008? Remember how Barack Obama, “the smartest guy in the room,” won major snark points for his line that the 1980’s had contacted Mitt Romney and demanded their cold war mentality back? I guess we can officially put those two memes to bed now.
Cross Posted from Musings of a Mad Conservative.
Tags: Crimea, Sarah Palin, Ukraine
