Tony Lee
Breitbart.com
Big Peace
28 Feb 2014
During the 2008 presidential campaign, Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin warned that if Senator Barack Obama were elected president, his “indecision” and “moral equivalence” may encourage Russia’s Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine.
Palin said then:
After the Russian Army invaded the nation of Georgia, Senator Obama’s reaction was one of indecision and moral equivalence, the kind of response that would only encourage Russia’s Putin to invade Ukraine next.
For those comments, she was mocked by the high-brow Foreign Policy magazine and its editor Blake Hounshell, who now is one of the editors of Politico magazine…
…Palin made her remarks on the stump after Obama’s running mate Joe Biden warned Obama supporters to “gird your loins” if Obama is elected because international leaders may test or try to take advantage of him…
The entire article, with video, is at Big Peace.
Related: U.S. assessment of Crimea: This isn’t an invasion, it’s an … “uncontested arrival”
…In other words, to save face over the fact that there’s nothing much we can do to stop this, the official U.S. line is that this can’t be an invasion if the Russians are being … greeted as liberators…
Admin officials tell CNN’s Barbara Starr this is an “uncontested arrival” not necessarily “an invasion” and that this distinction is “key.”
— Stephen Hayes (@stephenfhayes) February 28, 2014
Isn’t that rather like saying Hitler “just dropped in” to visit Poland?
Ukraine draws Obama into Putin’s long game
…[Fiona] Hill, the author of a book about Putin, said the former Russian intelligence official has outmaneuvered Western leaders by waiting for the right moment and then acting forcefully when he sensed his adversaries were off-balance. She said Putin’s grip on power was firm and Moscow would be a major player in regional dynamics from Europe to the Middle East for years to come.
“You can’t ignore Russia,” Hills said. “We just have to get smarter at playing this game.”
Flashback: At Debate, Obama Accuses Romney of Cold War Thinking
U.S. President Barack Obama attacked Republican rival Mitt Romney’s stance on Russia during a debate dedicated to foreign policy, accusing him of trying to drag the country back into the Cold War…
…”I’m glad that you recognize that al-Qaida is a threat, because a few months ago when you were asked what’s the biggest geopolitical threat facing America, you said Russia, not al-Qaida,” Obama said, according to a transcript of the debate on the ABC News website.
“The 1980s, they’re now calling to ask for their foreign policy back,” he said…
…”Russia does continue to battle us in the UN time and time again,” Romney said at the debate. “I have clear eyes on this. I’m not going to wear rose-colored glasses when it comes to Russia, or Mr. Putin. And I’m certainly not going to say to him, ‘I’ll give you more flexibility after the election.'”…
Update: Charles Krauthammer: ‘The Ukrainians – and I Think Everybody – Are Shocked by the Weakness of Obama’s Statements’ (video)
…“You could not have issued a more flaccid statement than what Obama did. Why did he issue it at all? He should’ve just stayed at the White House and gone off and had his happy hour with the Democrats,” he said…
The United States and Britain “reaffirmed” their commitment to protect Ukraine’s borders in exchange for the nation giving up its nuclear weapons in a little-known agreement known as the “Budapest Memorandum” signed by former President Bill Clinton in 1994…
Update 2: Politico Omits Reference to Their Editor Who Derided Palin for Ukraine Warning
…Blake Hounshell, who wrote then at Foreign Policy and is now an editor for Politico magazine, wrote that Palin’s comments were “strange” and “this is an extremely far-fetched scenario.”…
Update 3: Romney Was Right (video) The Washington Free Beacon from November 2013.
…Romney was also ridiculed by the Obama campaign in 2012 for declaring Russia the nation’s “No. 1 geopolitical foe,” with Obama quipping that the Cold War’s been over for more than 20 years.
However, the past year has seen consistent antagonism by Russia toward the U.S. over matters like the Syrian crisis, where the Vladimir Putin-backed Bashar al-Assad regime used chemical weapons against its own people in August, crossing the “red line” set by Obama a year earlier.
In a diplomatic embarrassment for the United States, Obama’s threat to use military force for crossing the line was deeply unpopular both home and abroad, and aRussian-brokered deal to have Assad remove his chemical weapons made Putin an international hero of sorts. Forbes even listed him first over Obama on the “World’s Most Powerful” list.
The Russian president, whose human rights record is abysmal, even had an editorialpublished in the New York Times scolding Obama for promoting American exceptionalism, and the Obama administration was practically reduced to being a bystander in the negotiations.
Russia has also continued to block U.N. resolutions condemning and sanctioning another U.S. enemy, Iran, and its nuclear program, and a defiant Moscow granted NSA leaker Edward Snowden asylum in August rather than grant American requests to send him home to face espionage charges. Obama told Jay Leno, “There have been times where they slip back into cold war thinking and a cold war mentality.”…
Read the whole thing.
