Remember all the explosive Obama campaign accusations about how the Bush administration alienated both our enemies and friends abroad, sullying the reputation of the United States? Remember Obama's campaign debate pledge to follow through on the deployment of missile shields in Eastern Europe? Well, fuggeddiboutit. That was just campaign speak. Tell it to the Czech Republic and Poland who stuck their necks way out for us.
The flip flop is based on "military intelligence," an oxymoron if there ever was one.
When ballistic missiles hit our and allies' shores, you can bet on hearing a new military intelligence estimate. Remember Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative, or what his critics called Star Wars? Well, that led directly to the dissolution of the Soviet Union and varying degrees of freedom to many of its satellite Eastern European countries.
And so now Obama is letting Putin and Medvedev off the mat, making them more likely to use their oil and gas reserves as economic and political weapons, or worse, to cross borders to punish and kill emerging democracies like Georgia when they attempt to join Nato. All this for Putin and Medvedev who actively trade with Iran and use their UN Security Council vote to weaken sanctions there.
Just last summer, VP Biden visited Ukraine and Georgia and then, in typical Bidenesque fashion, spouted off about how "the U.S. and Russia aren’t strategic equals. I think we vastly underestimate the hand that we hold,” he said, noting that Russia’s economy and population are “withering.” “They’re in a situation where the world is changing before them and they’re clinging to something in the past that is not sustainable.” As for the arsenal Russia inherited from the U.S.S.R., Mr. Biden said, “They can’t sustain it.”
So now we embolden the injured bear? By the way, where is Secretary of State Clinton, our chief diplomat, on all of this? I imagine she's not a happy camper.
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