Earlier today, at an American Embassy in the Middle East a
Russian General arrived to alert the government of the United States that
within one hour Russia would start a bombing campaign in Syria, and also would be asking
the US to move side.
The Pentagon responded with
surprise, saying that they had not expected this, and that they were “Taken Aback.”
Aside from the obvious disaster
this must that the Intelligence Services
here in America, on which we spend hundreds of billions of dollars, and they
still didn’t know this was coming, this is also a disaster of strategy tactics,
and a lack of humility.
Our president drew a red
line in Syria, saying we would remove Assad from power in Syria if he started
killing little children with chemical weapons. He did that, and America backed
down, relying on “assurances” that it wouldn’t happen again.
Then Mr. Obama told Russia
not to invade Ukraine, Russia ignored him, (after all, Syria, a much weaker
nation had done it, and nothing happened to the) and Russia now controls large swaths
of Ukraine.
Then Russia started putting
men into the Middle East as our nation’s airstrikes were too tentative and our
response to ISIS not anywhere near as strong as it should be. we warned Russia to
stay away, but who listens to a paper tiger? Putin reasoned, and so he put his
men in Syria anyway.
Next, we
thought Putin wouldn’t use the men he had there. But Putin is like a drunk
teenager who has been handed the keys. Why shouldn’t he drive the car? And so,
that brings us to today, where we are right now.
There have
been plenty of warning posts on the way but our president, with arrogance
worthy of an ancient king of Babylon ha not heeded them. Mitt Romney warned,
saying Russia was the most destabilizing country in the world, and the
president (literally) laughed at him, saying he was caught in the past. Well,
it wasn’t Mitt that was caught in the past, it was Putin.
Our
President has a monumental misunderstanding of the situation in the Middle East
and indeed around the world. He seems to feel that all nations are like the US
and Europe, valuing freedom, wanting the world to be stable, and caring about individual
human beings.
But you
need only look at the refugee crises to see that isn’t true. No horde of refugees
are kicking down the gates to get into Russia. There is no illegal immigration
crises of people trying to get into Syria or Iran, looking for a better life.
Indeed, the people are fleeing those nations in droves. Not only are the
economies bad, but the governments are corrupt, power hungry and unstable.
So when men
like Putin or Assad invade other countries or kill little children with
chemical weapons, we should not be “taken aback.” We should nod our heads in sadness and
understanding that bullies will always be bullies, and mass murderers will
always be mass murderers until they are stopped.
Napoleon
escaped from Elba, Hitler kept the death marches going even when he knew he was
beaten. Megalomaniacs like Putin won’t stop until they are dead or out of
options. And our president continues to give Putin options.
In the past
our president has been a man who has been slow to learn, but maybe finally he will
get it. He’d better. The next time he is “taken aback” it might be with the
leaders of Iran, and it might just be that they are announcing they have a nuclear
weapon.
Andrew C. Abbott
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