Ukraine Prays and Obama Plays

During the 2004 United States Presidential Campaign, the giddy, sycophantic press delighted in boasting how cool, calm, and intelligent Barack Obama was.   The object of their affection certainly agreed.  In The Promise, award-winning author, reporter, columnist and television analyst Jonathan Alter wrote that in the summer of 2007, when speaking to David Axelrod, the great and powerful Barack boasted about his presidential qualifications: “The weird thing is, I know I can do this job.  I like dealing with complicated issues.  I’m happy to make decisions.  I’m looking forward to it.  I think it’s going to be an easier adjustment for me than the campaign.  Much easier.”

Convinced of his superior capabilities then, Barack Obama apparently has not felt especially burdened by demands of the job. Consider how the President has handled the Ukrainian crisis:

March 6, 2014

The Supreme Council of Crimea votes unanimously to join the Russian Federation and to accelerate their referendum to March 16.

March 7, 2014

Barack Obama leaves the Whitehouse for a golf weekend in Florida.  The Daily Mail observed that "He checked his family into the Ocean Reef Club, a private, by-invitation-only membership club that is more of a gated, self-contained community sprawled across 2,500 acres on the northern edge of Key Largo. The property has two championship golf courses. There's also a swimming lagoon, tennis courts, a spa and fitness center, shopping and more than a dozen restaurants among the club's varied offerings.  Accommodation costs up to $2,500 per night.”

March 18, 2014

A Simferopol military base is stormed by Russians or their sympathizers and a Ukrainian soldier is killed. The Ukrainian premier asserts that his beleaguered nation now is under armed assault. 

March 18, 2014

Barack Obama appears with Andy Katz on ESPN where he is interviewed about his predictions for the NCAA basketball finals.  This amounts to picking the winners of 63 games and, therefore, requires a most significant investment of time and energy, especially if someone, let's say a President of the United States, doesn't want to be embarrassed by selecting some obvious losers.

Rather than stress too much over Ukraine, then, Barack Obama goes golfing in Florida and high-fiving with like-minded "hoops" lovers on ESPN; all the while, the Kiev government searches desperately for support against Russian storm troopers massing on Ukraine’s borders.

Please note that on November 30, 2013 in a post entitled Barack Vladimir Putin Obama: To Change America, I wrote the following:

Recall the infamous March 26, 2012 “open-mike” clandestine muttering in Seoul, South Korea, between President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev as they met to discuss critical, sensitive U.S.-Russian relations.

Obama: On all these issues, but particularly missile defense, this, this can be solved but it’s important for him [Putin] to give me space.

Medvedev: Yeah, I understand. I understand your message about space. Space for you…

Obama: This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility.

Medvedev: I understand. I will transmit this information to Vladimir.

Barack without a teleprompter.  Barack just being Barack, the real Barack, a man who, like Vladimir, regards elections as a hindrance to his unfettered power exploitation.

In addition to exposing Barack Obama’s disrespect for electoral limits on his power, consider what else that interchange communicated to Vladimir Putin.  It told Putin that Obama could not deal face-to-face, man-to-man with Vladimir, the real Russian decision maker, but had to communicate through a second-rate intermediary.  It told Putin that Obama is duplicitous, always trumpeting about democracy but secretly loving autocracy when autocracy means making unilateral decisions that ensure he will get his own way.  It told Putin that Obama loves clandestine, shadowy deals and fears openness and sunlight.  Most important for Ukraine, the open-mike documented Obama's eagerness to avoid conflict in order to appease the Russian Bear.

The Guardian in their September 17, 2009 in article entitled, "Obama abandons missile defence shield in Europe" underscored Barack's willingness to forsake allies and his reluctance to assertively handle Russia:

Barack Obama has abandoned the controversial Pentagon plan to build a missile defence system in Europe that had long soured relations with Russia....A few weeks ago, in a cri de coeur to Washington, several senior eastern European officials and public figures wrote a public letter to Obama complaining that their security interests were being ignored by the west to improve relations with Moscow.... Russian experts said Obama's decision could only be seen as an unambiguous concession to Moscow, adding that it would severely disappoint the new Nato countries of Eastern Europe.

You can bet that Vladimir's and Barack's emissaries are squirreled away in some hidden enclave right now, looking for a face-saving way that enables Obama to give Putin what he wants while maintaining a pretense of having gotten something in return.  I pray that Europe will refuse to accept a half-measure, a sham solution, which permits Russia’s rape of Crimea to be a prelude to raping all of Ukraine later.