The fruits of “overcharge” and “smart power” — Vlad Putin just mocked Barack Obama in an op-ed in the New York Times.
That would be the paper that is addicted to cheerleading for Barack Obama. It’s not printing Putin’s insults to him.
We may be looking at the arrival of Russia as a power to replace the United States.
Putin sets up a duel between himself and the United Nations over who used chemical weapons in Syria. You can see that duel on Drudge tonight. The UN says Assad did it. Putin says the rebels did it.
How many divisions does the UN have?
Quite a few, actually, if you count the ones that belong to the US. But Barack Obama isn’t interested in using our divisions to win anything. He has been telling the world that for five straight years. Putin has been listening.
After setting up his duel — which, by the way, sticks Barack Obama over in the corner wearing a pointy hat — he ends with a slap at Obama’s Syria address. Everybody but Andrew Sullivan panned that stinker.
My working and personal relationship with President Obama is marked by growing trust. I appreciate this. I carefully studied his address to the nation on Tuesday. And I would rather disagree with a case he made on American Exceptionalism, stating that the United States’ policy is “what makes America different. It’s what makes us exceptional.” It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation. There are big countries and small countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and those still finding their way to democracy. Their policies differ, too. We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord’s blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal.
The sad fact is, Obama didn’t even get American exceptionalism right. Obama defined American exceptionalism this way Tuesday night.
America is not the world’s policeman. Terrible things happen across the globe, and it is beyond our means to right every wrong, but when with modest effort and risk we can stop children from being gassed to death and thereby make our own children safer over the long run, I believe we should act.
That’s what makes America different. That’s what makes us exceptional. With humility, but with resolve, let us never lose sight of that essential truth.
We’re not exceptional because we can engage in the occasional police action when the target is weak enough that even Obama will contemplate military action. American exceptionalism is the belief that America is a revolutionary nation that is based on ideas about human freedom, not tribal or ethnic ties. We are a “new nation.” Exceptional. Barack Obama the genius got that basic thing about his own country wrong.
One hates to say this about a sitting president, but Barack Obama really is an incompetent, ignorant jackass. He can’t not act like a know-it-all jerk who doesn’t actually know a thing.
That’s why he’s sinking in the polls.
That’s why Vlad Putin just gave him an atomic wedgie in front of the whole world.
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