Sign "O" the Times

Sometimes, the best thing you can do is nothing. At other times, the worst thing you can do is nothing. On rarer occasions the worst thing you can do is claim you’re doing something while actually doing nothing. But it takes a special kind of incompetence to do nothing while achieving the opposition of what you claim to be doing. But “a special kind of incompetence” has become the hallmark of the Wiggleroom Administration’s foreign policy:

U.S. intelligence agencies now have detailed information that Russia has amassed the kind of forces needed for a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. But the Obama administration hasn’t shared with Ukraine the imagery, intercepts, and analysis that pinpont the location of the Russian troops ready to seize more Ukrainian land, The Daily Beast has learned.

President Obama has repeatedly and publicly expressed solidarity with the Ukrainian people—and warned Russian leader Vladimir Putin that there will be consequences if he takes over any more Ukrainian territory. Yet Obama’s administration has so far been reluctant to hand over the kind of intelligence the Ukrainians could use to defend themselves.

I’m sure the White House rationale is that they wouldn’t want to do anything to “provoke” the Kremlin. But if Vladimir Putin is the hungry customer, then Ditherton Wiggleroom is the helpful waiter assuring him that Crimea was merely the amuse bouche.