The Road to Middle East Perdition [Obama’s Middle East Blunders, Putin’s Gains]

National Review ^ | 10/13/2015 | Victor Davis Hanson

[Servant of the Cross]

From reset to the Iran deal, Obama’s mistakes are so comprehensive they almost look deliberate.

How did Vladimir Putin — with his country reeling from falling oil prices, possessing only a second-rate military, in demographic free-fall, and suffering from an array of international sanctions — find himself the new play-maker of the Middle East?

Putin’s ascendency was not foreordained. It followed a series of major U.S. miscalculations and blunders of such magnitude that it almost seems they must have been deliberate.

What exactly was our road to perdition in the Middle East?

1. Reset with Putin

When Barack Obama came into office, the outgoing Bush administration had crafted a moderate response to Putin’s aggression in Ossetia. The U.S. had made missile-defense agreements with the Czech Republic and Poland. Some Georgian forces were airlifted by the U.S. from Afghanistan back home. Indeed, at the time, many liberals complained that America was too soft on Putin. Perhaps. But the Obama administration entered office claiming the exact opposite, suggesting that the Bush pushback was part of a needless American-caused estrangement from Russia.

Pushing the plastic reset button was Hillary Clinton’s sad gesture signaling Putin and his team that Bush was gone, that a new, more receptive administration was in power — and thus that relations must naturally improve. Putin was somewhat perplexed, given that he knew Russia was to blame for the new estrangement. Naturally, then, he saw the Obama–Clinton reset grandstanding as more critical of America’s past behavior than of Russia’s present aggression — a fact that fueled Putin’s further calculations that he could safely move into Crimea and Ukraine.

2. The Skedaddle from Iraq

[Servant of the Cross]

There will come a day when VDH finally accepts that all of this "blundering" is entirely deliberate by the 0bama/Jarrett/Abedin jihad cabal.

[Servant of the Cross]

VDH ping ...

[samtheman]

They atent mistakes at all. It was all intentional.

[MuttTheHoople]

This isn't blundering- this is B. Hussein getting payback on the U.S. beating his hero-nation The Soviet Union in the Cold War.

Much like Hitler swore revenge on the people who "stabbed germany in the back" at the end of WW I, Obama wants to pay back america and the Eastern european allies who "stabbed the USSR in the back".

[kingpins10]

Agreed. Obama hasn’t “blundered” at all. This is all intentional.

[davius]

Obama’s enduring legacy will be for ushering in the era of fag politics. Swish!

[elhombrelibre]

Obama is the perfect patsy for a bully like Putin. It was another good reason why any Republican would have been better than Obama.

[2ndDivisionVet]

Only 3 minutes Stunning Video the country was never supposed to see.... Secretary of State John Kerry introduces Admiral Ace Lyons to speak at a private meeting. He probably regrets doing so.
THIS VIDEO LINK PROBABLY WILL NOT LAST LONG!!!! PLEASE PASS IT ON!!

http://www.liveleak.com/ll_embed?f=51fe948515b4

[Diogenesis]

The fault is not in the stars, it is in the
first Moslem fraud pRes_ _ent, who became the King
and Caliph of his submissive, hated, EXEMPT GOP.

[Kaslin]

Thanks for the ping

[McGruff]

We all know where Osama’s loyalties lie. Putin is just taking advantage of them. Right or wrong.

[Servant of the Cross]

Wow! Truth spoken boldly and convincingly. And that was in February of this year!

Where is the gOp and why have they not put Admiral Lyons in front of cameras? Their own hands are dirty.

[Steve_Seattle]

"From reset to the Iran deal, Obama’s mistakes are so comprehensive they almost look deliberate."

Of course it was deliberate. Columbus Day got me thinking about the left's attitude towards Western Civilization in general and the United States in particular. According to the Left, Columbus never should have sailed and the US therefore never should have existed. To this day, according to the left, the US should be populated by a couple million Native Americans, living much as they did three hundred years ago. I do not think this is a misstatement of the attitudes of the left - it is either implicit or explicit in everything they say about our country's origins.

This is why they are literally trying to destroy this country - they think it is illegitimate from the beginning.

[canuck_conservative]

The article right after VDH on the NR site, by Arthur Herman, is pretty good too.

[COBOL2Java]

The correct title of the article is “The Road to Middle East Perdition”

[bert]

obama et al are not smart enough to intentionally produce the present outcome

the only Obama goal is the total success of the liberal envisioned utopia. by never engaging in any belligerent act, the pacifist root of the anti vietnam war mindset prevails. total pacifism is all they know.

they will never “give war a chance” and never understand that peace is but the short interval between wars

they will never comprehend that war rather than peace is the natural condition. they will and infact are, being eaten alive where they sit

[Servant of the Cross]

Please change ... but at 7:32am this morning the title was as originally posted at NR. For whatever reason, they like to change VDH article titles.

[McGruff]

Obama, how’s that Arab Spring working out for ya?

[Netz]

At first many thought he was just a novice Community Organizer from Chicago with no experience but he seemed to be so darn cool that the masses put him into office on a whim, with no hard evidence that he could do the job.

Now, with more than 7 years experience under his belt many think he was just a novice Community Organizer from Chicago with no experience but he seemed to be so darn cool that the masses put him into office on a whim, with no hard evidence that he could do the job.

Result? Unmitigated disaster.

[Netz]

At first many thought he was just a novice Community Organizer from Chicago with no experience but he seemed to be so darn cool that the masses put him into office on a whim, with no hard evidence that he could do the job.

Now, with more than 7 years experience under his belt many think he was just a novice Community Organizer from Chicago with no experience but he seemed to be so darn cool that the masses put him into office on a whim, with no hard evidence that he could do the job.

Result? Unmitigated disaster.