Yes Obama pulled the trigger on the bin ladin raid; I have not forgotten. How could anyone forget after the administration was so self gushing in their praise that the people involved in the operation asked them to tone it down. The strutting was endangering our own people. He gets credit for bin ladin, but I can't imagine anyone in the white house not giving the raid a go. I give him full credit for the drone policy, it's a change in policy, good use of assets; as i have said before. Syria is giving up (only about half there) WMD two years after Obama 'Red Lined' them and then stumbled his way to policy while Assad repeatedly used the WMD. So of the three top items you list to point out Obama's "obvious very good foreign policy" one is very good (drones), one is really just doing his job (bin ladin), and the other was not well executed. You are easily impressed. If you really believe that Putin will pay a price that would keep him from doing this all over again you are not paying attention. He has not slowed down, quite the contrary he has hit the gas. The West leaders are throwing out face saving ideas because at this point that's all they have. It's to late, they lost this one years ago. The best they can do is set up the atmosphere so Putin doesn't do it again. I'm not surprised you think Obama's foreign policy is very good. Your powers of observation are obviously impaired; anyone could see the acne was photo-shopped.
WTF does that mean; its only a piece of a country. You can't rationalize this away as if its not a big deal just to make your guy not look naive. Let me be specific there is nothing we can do now; its over. Russia is not giving the land back, ever. The failures that led to this were years in the making. All we can do now is create an atmosphere to deter the next aggression in places like Transnistria.
It is hard to follow the great posts Kluke has made but a few points here. 1) Give OBL a rest...everyone has given the president his kudos. Are you willing to give W similar acknowledgement for putting in place the team and system that found OBL and gave them the tools to kill him? 2) AQ without OBL has metastasized into a broad cancer that is causing problems all over the ME. It is a credit to both the president and his predecessor that there have been no serious attacks against US soil since 9/11. 3) You are fixated on the supposed removal of WMDs from Syria and what a master stroke that was. Red the WMD removal is far behind schedule and the UN agency dealing with it suspects the Syrians are lying about their stockpiles and delaying the turnover. More significant is the interesting fact that when the WMD issue came up Assad was losing the war. The delay gave him a breathing space and the continuing supply of arms from Russia, fighters + arms from Iran and Hezbollah militia have changed the balance. Assad is rolling back the rebels. It took away any glare of publicity on Assad's continuing to use his air and artillery on civilians. Putin's proxy Assad is in better shape today than he was when the WMD issue came up. 4) North Korea has been isolated since the fall of the Soviet Union. This president had nothing to do with the isolation but continue policies in place for 50+ years. The only reason the Chinese give him any support as they are afraid a NK collapse will create a flood of NK refugees into China that it will destabilize them. That or a war between the Koreas will cause equally desperate issues. 5) Again with laying claim to the withdrawal from Iraq is ludicrous. He only followed the schedule W put in place. 6) We aren't out of Afghanistan yet. Beside the willingness to give him credit where none is due you also have a pretty low bar for foreign policy success.
You are easily duped by politics. He has long list of foreign policy successes that you can't really challenge and this is against what failures? Have you been listening to me at all? This is going to play out over years, not days. We will be playing our kind of game, which has worked on Russia before. We can outspend him and leave him in economic arrears like his Soviet predecessors, but it will take time. Crimea is not the problem, it is of no strategic importance to us. In fact Ukraine is not either, but NATO is. That is where we draw our lines. Ukraine has always been a buffer between Russia and its enemies and they fear losing that buffer. That is what is behind all of this. Russian should have been wooing Ukraine instead of trying to intimidate them. He miscalculated. Once you take Crimea out of Ukraine, which Putin has done, it becomes virtually impossible for a pro-Russian Ukrainian ever to win the Ukrainian presidency. Without Crimea, only 15 percent of the population will be ethnic Russian. The only hope that Russia will reverse course in Crimea comes precisely because Putin might realize that his only chance of maintaining influence in Ukraine is by having Crimea, with its large Russian majority, as part of that country. Putin has made a strategic miscalculation. If he rashly decides to take over the rest of Ukraine, he will have a huge and very expensive insurgency on his hands. Meanwhile Ukraine is getting a free trade pact with the EU. When their economy starts showing the successes of the former Soviet allies now in the EU, it will only make his situation with his own dissatisfied population worse. You are focusing on Putin's strutting tough guy routine today and think we should be strutting too, I suppose. But this is a speak softly and carry a big stick moment. In this case the Big Stick is economic leverage. We have a strong, diverse economy and a robust energy future. The Russian economy is riddled with corruption and depends on Russia being a gas station to Europe. It has failed to diversify and grow since the fall of communism. We will use asymmetric, economic power to deal with Russia. I am astute, it's true. You'd be surprised, Hoss.
Just pointing out that Putin has not yet taken over a country as you suggested. Trying to puff Putin up is stupid.
Those tools have been there since long before Bush. You can slob his knob if you wish. I only give Bush credit for what he actually did. He created the largest marine sanctuary in the world. He drove Al Qaeda from Afghanistan into Pakistan, but failed to seriously go after them in that sanctuary. Bush kissed Pakistani ass and Obama has not. Al Qaeda is no longer a well-funded, terrorist group tightly focused on attacking America. Instead the many previously existing local islamist groups had adopted the name, but do not coordinate and are focused on local enemies. There have been no more 9/11's and both administrations have stepped up to the plate on that. My defense of OBama's foreign policy is not any condemnation of Bush, but you seem really defensive about it. Get it right. What I have done is list Syria among his foreign policy accomplishments. There have been no more chemical attacks have there. The WMD.s are still leaving, aren't they. What delay? All that happened was that he lost his chemical weapons. It's still a civil war and Assad is hanging on. Try to remember that we have no side in this fight, even the "moderate" rebels are not pro-US. Syria is an implacable enemy that is disintegrating in a civil war. We sort of want that to happen. Israel is stronger as a result, Syria is no longer a threat and Hezbollah is being weakened badly by this. Things have changed greatly in the last 50 years. Russia is no longer a player there. Both Clinton and Bush entered into treaty negotiations with North Korea, that the gooks later violated. Obama has not given them any opportunities to grandstand any any new agreements to break. It's been a tighter isolation. Even the Chinese have lost patience with them. 5) Again with laying claim to the withdrawal from Iraq is ludicrous. He only followed the schedule W put in place.[/quote]Bush's mantra was "stay the course". Obama actually ordered the troop out of Afghnaistan. His successes are many, his failures are . . . what were his foreign policy failures again?
We weren't 17+ trillion in debt when we outspent Russia and caused their collapse. We have been running trillion dollar budget deficits and are on course to be 20 trillion in debt by the time Barry leaves office. I doubt we outspend them again. Not to mention they're downsizing and cuttin the military spending. Hard to be a super power with 1/2 an Army. If armed conflict with Russia were to occur, I doubt drones and Special Forces have much impact.
It was pointed out to me today that the US is perfectly okay with Israel annexing what they want, but we all of a sudden are up in arms over Russia doing the same. I thought it was a good point.
Israel seized the land from Lebanon, Egypt and Syria when it was attacked in 1967.They are surrounded on all sides by avowed enemies who swear to drive them into the sea and kill every Jew. In spite of that they have returned much of it including the Sinai much of the West Bank and don't claim the Golan Heights but are waiting for a treaty with Syria before returning it. They did keep the east bank and Jerusalem. One for safety the other for political/religious reasons. Russia ceded the Crimea to Ukraine in 1954 and guaranteed it in the 1994 treaty. They took it back by use of force when there was no provocation but because a madman decided he wanted it. There is a major difference my friend and the guy that made the point either doesn't know history or has an axe to grind.
BTW the attack on Israel in 1967 was unprovoked unless you believe Israel's existance is a provocation.
