Complete Fiasco

Only a day after the White House grandly declared its support for the Ukrainian offensive to quash separatists on its eastern border, “a defense expert said that the government bid to push back the separatists was ‘already a disaster, bordering on a complete fiasco’” according to the Los Angeles Times.

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gunmen seized a column of six armored vehicles from Ukrainian soldiers and narrowly failed to grab three more.

Ukrainian media reported that 30 armed men captured another building, municipal headquarters, in Donetsk, the main city of eastern Ukraine. Unconfirmed Russian news reports said about 300 Ukrainian soldiers deployed in the area had laid down their arms. …

The Ukrainian Defense Ministry confirmed that the armored vehicles has been lost to the armed separatists in the town of Kramatorsk.

The Wall Street Journal put it less jarringly. “Ukraine’s Efforts to Regain Control of East Sputter”. But a retired US general office speaking to NBC News said it all. Putin’s winning without even having to invade.

“I think Putin’s smarter than to have an invasion,” Gen. Montgomery Meigs told NBC News, referring to Vladimir Putin, the Russian president. “He has the whip hand with all his special-ops guys running around firing up the Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine.

It’s time to recall how the White House supported Kiev. Time Magazine said:

White House Backs Ukraine’s Eastern Offensive.

The White House says it supports the offensive against separatists in the country’s eastern provinces, which began Tuesday 25 miles north of Slovyansk and could expand to 10 cities throughout the region

The White House said Tuesday it supports military action taken on Tuesday by the interim government of Ukraine against separatist militants across the eastern part of the country. …

U.S. officials say there are no current plans to provide weapons to Ukraine, the Wall Street Journal reports. Officials estimate there are roughly 50,000 Russian forces deployed to the country’s border with eastern Ukraine.

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On the occasion of that warning — was it only yesterday? — I wrote:

Obama’s half-way, half-a** measures involves the US without him thinking he’s involving it. He’s parsing in an international area where parsing doesn’t work. Putin now has a plausible pretext for claiming Obama internationalized the conflict and therefore will argue that two can play that game. And you can bet your boodle that Putin’s return blow won’t be limited to a few containers of MREs.

And if it escalates, what then? Another speech?

The recent fiasco illustrates dramatically what happens when you don’t fight to win. You lose.

I don’t like it, but I guess only fair to point out, I told you so.  Putin is now a little further West and Obama’s stock — except among his supporters — is a little further down.

So what now? A dark look from Obama’s furrowed, noble brow? It’s interesting to recall the hagiographic words of the Democratic Underground, comparing Putin and Obama, not in order to gloat, but to illustrate just how badly wrong the Left’s estimate of events has been.

A dominant Obama meets Putin at G20

Putin knows when he is in the presence of a real world leader.

President Barack Obama was intent on getting the upper hand as he greeted Russia’s Vladimir Putin at the G-20 summit on Thursday, according to body language experts who watched the frosty exchange.

From a jacket-buttoning pause to a hard-pumping handshake, Obama displayed tell-tale signs of dominance after he alit from a limo in front of St. Petersburg’s Konstantin Palace, where Putin waited to meet him, communication experts said.

Patti Wood, author of “Success Signals: Body Language in Business,” made a similar analogy.

“It was very odd. Obama is treating him like he was greeting a doorman,” she said.

She noted the significance Obama buttoning his suit jacket after exiting the limo.

“That’s another way men show power,” she said. “It says, ‘I know the attention is on me’ and it’s a little bit rude to do that. It’s grabbing the power for yourself.”

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Here, take my bags

Were you ever Johnny Roventini?

What’s really scary is people with the Democratic Underground mentality are still in charge. Recalling the days when Obama treated Putin like a doorman or made Netanyahu wait like a flunkey while he went and had dinner or the occasions when he left Merkel standing in a reception line because he had other, more important things to do recalls David Beatty’s famous remark at Jutland as his battlecruisers were blowing up, one after the other. “There seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today”.

Kaboom. Ka-pow. There’s something wrong in the neighborhood.

Well what could it be old chap?

[jwplayer config=”pjmedia_richardfernandez” mediaid=”36104″]

How did the crooked promoter put it in the movie?  “The fight game today is like show business. There’s no real fighters anymore, they’re all actors. The best showman becomes the champ! ”  Maybe it’s the same with politics. The best actor becomes the president. The promoters probably think the voters are too dumb to tell the difference between a president and someone who only plays the president. And things go along real smoothly until the president with the faked muscles runs into the real thing.


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