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The Bear Is Loose [Obama fundraises while Putin runs amok]
Washington Free Beacon ^ | 7/18/2014 | Matthew Continetti

Posted on 07/18/2014 2:49:47 AM PDT by markomalley

“The bear is loose!” President Obama has been saying, whenever he leaves the White House to visit Starbucks, or sandwich shops, or burger joints, or BBQ shacks, or neighborhood diners, in his increasingly rote and pathetic attempts to “connect” with “real people.” Obama, we have been told, is frustrated, “restless,” bored with the responsibilities and chores of office. He thinks of himself as the bear—intimidating, wild, untamed, roving—escaping his den. But he is flattering himself. Obama is not the bear. He is the cub: aimless, naïve, self-interested, self-indulgent, irresponsible, irresolute. The bear is in Moscow.

One can trace a line from any global hotspot to Russia and its authoritarian ruler. Iran? Russia has assisted its nuclear program for decades. Syria? Russia is Bashar Assad’s arms dealer. Iraq? Russia is sending men and materiel to the central government. Afghanistan? Putin muscled nearby Kyrgyzstan into closing our air base there, crucial for transport, resupply, and reconnaissance in the war against the Taliban. The contretemps between the United States and Germany is the result of Edward Snowden’s breach of national security. Where is Snowden? In Russia, where he has just asked to have his visa renewed. I wonder if Vladimir Putin will say yes.

Then there is Ukraine, where Putin has been driving events since March, when he illegally annexed Crimea. The West thought sanctions would intimidate Putin, would force him into retreat. For a time, he drew down his troops on the Ukrainian border, leaving the fighting in eastern Ukraine to separatists trained, armed, and led by Russian special forces. The West thought it could ignore the situation. A guerrilla war in the east, it was assumed, does not threaten democracy in Kiev. The Ukrainian economy returned to its lethargic equilibrium. The Ukrainians elected a president. President Obama, in his speech at West Point, trumpeted his Ukraine policy as an example of “our ability to shape world opinion” and “isolate Russia.”

Some isolation. Even as Western attention turned to the Middle East, Russia continued to act unimpeded, and the Ukrainian war went on. Recently, when Poroshenko, the new Ukrainian president, retook the city of Sloviansk, Putin’s hand was forced. Russian soldiers reappeared along the border—more than 10,000 at last count. The weapons systems supplied by Russia to the insurgents became more sophisticated. Earlier this week, a rocket brought down a Ukrainian cargo plane. The rocket was fired from Russia. Thursday brought us only the latest unintended consequence of Russia’s war on Ukrainian independence: the destruction of a Malaysian airlines flight carrying 295 souls. The attack is revolting, the loss of life infuriating, but the downing of Flight MH17 is not the first unanticipated outcome of the war Vladimir Putin began in Ukraine. Nor will it be the last.

I think it was a brilliant stroke,” Hillary Clinton says of the “reset” policy the United States pursued toward Russia when she was secretary of State. She has an odd understanding of brilliance. The “reset” gave us a world where Georgia remains illegally occupied, where Poland and the Czech Republic lack missile defenses, where American parents cannot adopt Russian babies, where Russian bombers fly within 50 miles of the Pacific coast, where Ukraine is sundered, where the prospects for ground war in Eastern Europe are high, where Putin says U.S. sanctions against his cronies will take bilateral relations to a “dead end.”

When I hear comments such as Clinton’s, when I listen to White House press secretary Josh Earnest say, in all seriousness, that his administration has “substantially improved the tranquility of the global community,” I feel as though they are lost in the postmodern funhouse of the Kremlin’s “non-linear war,” as though they, too, are casualties of Russian Maskirovka, of deception, concealment, propaganda, and disinformation.

“Non-linear war is the means through which a geopolitical raider can leverage his relative weakness,” writes Peter Pomerantsev. “And this vision appeals to a very broad constituency across the world, to those full of resentment for the West and infused by the sense that the ‘global village’ model is a priori rigged.” Russian manipulation of narrative and image, of wishful thinking and gullibility, has been such a success that the Obama administration actually believes it has accomplished something. It hasn’t. On the contrary: President Obama has relinquished American standing, neglected America’s responsibilities as the guarantor of international security.

The heralds of the “post-American world” devote most of their songs to the wonders of the BRIC economies, the rise of a globally conscious, technologically savvy youth culture, the justice of a humbled America, the importance of institutions and conferences and stakeholders in resolving global conflict through diplomatic means. What they never get around to singing about, in any particular detail, is the day-to-day reality of the post-American world: the headlines one encounters when Vladimir Putin is unrestrained; the numbers of dead and wounded in civil wars fueled by Russian weapons and Russian assistance; the lies and conspiracies and anti-Americanism fueled by Russian information operations; and the unexpected events, the contingencies, the collateral damage of insurgency and strife. No secret why they leave all this out: such dissonant lyrics do not jibe with a placid, comforting melody of exhaustion, war weariness, senescence.

Well, there is no getting around it now. “Obama contends with arc of instability unseen since ’70s,” says the Wall Street Journal. Militias and rogue generals in Libya, Hamas versus Israel, Hezbollah and Assad and Iran against Sunni rebels and the Caliphate, the prospect of an Iranian bomb, war in Ukraine, withdrawal from Afghanistan, China bullying its neighbors—such is the extent of global disorder today.

“It’s 3 a.m. and your children are safe and asleep,” Hillary Clinton’s campaign imagined in 2008. “But there’s a phone in the White House and it’s ringing.” Things are “happening” in a “dangerous” world. “Who do you want answering the phone?”

Today we know the answer: The phone isn’t ringing in the White House. It’s ringing in the Kremlin. And the man answering it is Vladimir Putin.


TOPICS: Editorial; Russia
KEYWORDS: feckless; mh17; obama; ukraine
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1 posted on 07/18/2014 2:49:47 AM PDT by markomalley
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To: markomalley
“The bear is loose!” President Obama has been saying, whenever he leaves the White House

He's just letting us know the latest news about the imminent arrival of The Beast.

2 posted on 07/18/2014 2:53:50 AM PDT by ClearCase_guy ("Harvey Dent, can we trust him?" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBsdV--kLoQ)
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To: ClearCase_guy

Obama a bear? LOL!


3 posted on 07/18/2014 3:03:16 AM PDT by KevinB (Barack Obama: Our first black, gay, Kenyan, Muslim president!)
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To: KevinB

The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
— Yeats


4 posted on 07/18/2014 3:05:43 AM PDT by ClearCase_guy ("Harvey Dent, can we trust him?" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBsdV--kLoQ)
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To: KevinB

a Bear is a large, hairy man who projects an image of rugged masculinity. Bears are one of many LGBT communities with events, codes, and a culture-specific identity.

From Wikipedia


5 posted on 07/18/2014 3:06:21 AM PDT by combat_boots (The Lion of Judah cometh. Hallelujah. Gloria Patri, Filio et Spiritui Sancto!)
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To: markomalley

Obama probably doesn’t even realize that there is connection between “bear” and Russia.

In his bath house world, a “bear” is a large, hairy man who projects an image of rugged masculinity. He fantasizes being such a person, instead of the skinny, effeminate runt that he is.


6 posted on 07/18/2014 3:07:21 AM PDT by Fresh Wind (The last remnants of the Old Republic have been swept away.)
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To: KevinB

The reference to a “bear” has to do with Russia.


7 posted on 07/18/2014 3:09:07 AM PDT by elhombrelibre (Against Obama. Against Putin. Pro-freedom. Pro-US Constitution.)
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To: All

nature abhors a vacuum so Putin is filling it. This is what a post-American world will be so get used to it.


8 posted on 07/18/2014 3:15:18 AM PDT by newnhdad (Our new motto: USA, it was fun while it lasted.)
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To: markomalley

“The bear is loose”

With the Obamas it is more like “who let the dogs out”


9 posted on 07/18/2014 3:21:08 AM PDT by Jimmy Valentine (DemocRATS - when they speak, they lie; when they are silent, they are stealing the American Dream)
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To: markomalley

Obama’s “the bear is loose” is code for “here comes the queer cat”.


10 posted on 07/18/2014 3:42:43 AM PDT by abclily
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To: markomalley
  Putin Spies Obama Working Out Putin is to blame for Flight 17's Destruction
Presidential Tail
11 posted on 07/18/2014 3:48:47 AM PDT by Fear The People (When the government fears the people, you have LIBERTY.)
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To: elhombrelibre

Yup...The Russian Bear and the Chinese Dragon... I am sure there are other tags like that.


12 posted on 07/18/2014 3:51:31 AM PDT by SMARTY ("When you blame others, you give up your power to change." Robert Anthony)
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To: KevinB
Obama a bear? LOL!

Possibly Boo Boo... Obooboo.

13 posted on 07/18/2014 4:23:15 AM PDT by Common Sense 101 (Hey libs... If your theories fly in the face of reality, it's not reality that's wrong.)
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To: Fresh Wind

Worm or snake would be more like it.


14 posted on 07/18/2014 4:25:47 AM PDT by trustandobey
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To: markomalley

I wonder how much Putin has secretly contributed to the democrats.


15 posted on 07/18/2014 4:35:15 AM PDT by ETL 2
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To: markomalley
This all reminds me of a song...

Jet airliner shot from sky
Famine horror, millions die
Earthquake terror figures rise

Princess Di is wearing a new dress

-New Dress, Depeche Mode (1986)

When will Americans finally wake up?

16 posted on 07/18/2014 4:55:15 AM PDT by montag813
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To: combat_boots

Bath House Bear-y?


17 posted on 07/18/2014 4:56:43 AM PDT by P.O.E. (Pray for America)
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To: markomalley
Obama is not the bear. He is the cub: aimless, naïve, self-interested, self-indulgent, irresponsible, irresolute.

We have a spoiled selfish child as president.

18 posted on 07/18/2014 5:03:08 AM PDT by Rummyfan (Iraq: it's not about Iraq anymore, it's about the USA!)
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To: markomalley
Militias and rogue generals in Libya, Hamas versus Israel, Hezbollah and Assad and Iran against Sunni rebels and the Caliphate, the prospect of an Iranian bomb, war in Ukraine, withdrawal from Afghanistan, China bullying its neighbors—such is the extent of global disorder today.

But the global community is tranquil!

19 posted on 07/18/2014 5:08:56 AM PDT by Rummyfan (Iraq: it's not about Iraq anymore, it's about the USA!)
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To: markomalley

He told Putin he would have more flexibility after the election.


20 posted on 07/18/2014 5:38:54 AM PDT by Anima Mundi (Envy is just passive, lazy greed.)
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