Say Anything Blog

Obama apparently thinks that when Russia began its war of aggression with Georgia they were just following America’s lead.

Yesterday, Barack Obama told a Virginia audience “We’ve got to send a clear message to Russia and unify our allies. They can’t charge into other countries. Of course it helps if we are leading by example on that point.”

Faced with a geopolitical challenge that demands unwavering Western fortitude and American stewardship, Barack Obama apologizes for the misuse of American strength and initiative. This speaks of a worldview in which America’s faults are always kept at the fore and a national security paradigm in which the U.S. must seek to understand enemy action as a manifestation of American arrogance. This worldview leaves us dangerously ill-equipped to tackle or even contain antagonists like Vladimir Putin and company.

To compare the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan (which I think we have to assume Obama is talking about) to what Russia is doing in Georgia is to suggest a level of naivete about the world that simply should not exist in a national leader.  We invaded Afghanistan to catch the criminals responsible for 9/11.  We invaded Iraq to liberate the people there from the cruel tyranny of Saddam Hussein as a part of the overall war on terror (oppressed masses in the middle east are fertile grounds for international terrorist recruits).  Russia invaded Georgia to re-establish the Soviet-era imperialist fiefdom the country once was.  And while the Russians used the plight of the Ossetians as a pretext for war, only a fool would believe that the conflict was only to do with that.

On a related note, does anyone miss the sort of Democrat who didn’t see the world through a fog of American misdeeds?  I don’t think Franklin Roosevelt was wringing his hands about American slavery while allied forces were liberating concentration camps in Europe.  Harry Truman didn’t refrain from bringing WWII to a swift end by nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki because some in America said that FDR had goaded Japan into war.  Heck, even John Kennedy was capable of recognizing that Soviet aggression in the world was worth opposing even if America’s track record has never been spotless.

FDR, HST and JFK leaders who understood that our mistakes weren’t absolution for the mistakes of our enemies.  It’s too bad Barack Obama isn’t a leader.