Posted on 03/26/2014 7:24:44 AM PDT by mandaladon
On a playground or in a bar, the most important thing to know about a bully is his motivation. What ticks him off? Who's his next victim? If it's you, how do you avoid a butt-kicking?
On the world stage, Vladimir Putin is a bully – and President Obama not only seems clueless about the Russian leader's inner drive, he embraces his ambivalence. "I'm less interested in motivation," Obama said Monday in The Hague, "and more interested in the facts and the principles that not only the United States but the entire international community are looking to uphold."
Taken at face value, it's a disturbing response from a world leader who should lie awake at night concerned about the motivation of U.S. adversaries, whose first meeting of every day involves an intelligence briefing on the motivations of global actors.
It could be that Obama is playing mind games with Putin, looking into the soul that transfixed President Bush 13 years ago and seeing a man whose greatest weakness is parochial hubris. Want to hurt Putin? Say you don't care about him. In a verbal equivalent of a groin punch, Obama might dismiss Russia as a "regional power" that antagonizes its neighbors "out of weakness."
But it's hard to credit Obama with such savvy calculation. I take him at his word: He doesn't care.
First, his handling of leaders in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Syria, China and most recently Russia exposes a lack of empathy and sophistication. As Julie Pace of The Associated Press put it in her question to Obama at The Hague, "You've been criticized during this dispute with Russia as not understanding President Putin's motivations. As recently as last month, you and others in your administration said you thought Putin was reflecting or pausing his incursion into Crimea.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationaljournal.com ...
***It could be that Obama is playing mind games with Putin***
Not smart enough to do so. One has to know how to get into someone else’s head and then live there rent free.
?? I doubt he ever had that meeting.
I never grew out of asking, "Why?"
If I know your 'why', I know more than you probably want me to know, which is why you hide your 'why'
Putin knows which of zero’s buttons to push and when to push them.
The effete west keeps calling Putin’s actions ‘bullying’, which suggests pointless rudeness or petty sadism.
Putin as a national leader is engaged in realpolitik for real objectives, to the real benefit of the nation he leads.
That is what real leaders do, since the days of Sparta and before. The failure to comprehend this simply underscores how enervated and vapid the secular west has become.
You are exactly correct. When you find out WHY, you have solved for X, and you know the equation.
Just make fun of 0bama's ears. That really gets his mom-jeans in a bunch.
Bob Gates in his memoir says that..... “the US ignored its commitments to Russia after the collapse of the a Soviet Union.”
Additionally....During reunification of Germany EU and US made another assurance to Russian that NATO will not expand eastward .....(Otherwise Russia will not approve reunification of Germany at UN , consequently Germany was able to reunify)....... and Gorbachev disbanded the Warsaw Pact Alliance.
..... With time NATO alliance became the intervention organization and today is at Russian borders.
Russia has its interests and these are threatened by the presence of NATO against its borders,..... just as the US would never tolerate being confronted by potentially hostile military alliance along the border with Mexico or from the Cuba; .........(for example the Cuban Missile Crisis of 62’ was successfully diverted by President Kennedy and Khrushchev (Russian missiles in Cuba and US in Turkey.)
The Obamadork would have a hard time outmaneuvering an amoeba.
The only reason that idiot gets away with anything is that the MSM is too ashamed to admit that they put him there...due to their own lack of morals and IQ.
These effetes have no concept that the way to handle a bully is to try to kick the shit out of him. You may get your own butt kicked (tho most bullies are cowards) but he is then (a) going to respect you, (b) going to go after more-tender 'meat', like Fournier.
lol!
“whose first meeting of every day involves an intelligence briefing on the motivations of global actors.”
He’s not attending the same morning meetings that the impeached, disbarred rapist didn’t attend.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
