Tag Archives: Syria crisis

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Putin stomps on 300 million sets of toes

Russian President Vladimir Putin is bucking for a pie in the face next time he comes to the United States of America, the world’s remaining superpower, with the world’s leading economy and a history of extraordinary achievement.

You see, the Russian strongman has dissed the United States by declaring that we aren’t “exceptional.”

http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/12/politics/putin-syria-editorial-reaction/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

Putin put proverbial pen to paper in an op-ed column that appeared this week in the New York Times in which he pushed for completion of a deal proposed by the Russians to have Syria turn over its chemical weapons cache to international inspectors. The idea is to end the avert a threatened U.S. strike against Syria in retaliation for the government’s gassing of civilians.

But it’s the view he holds about America that has gotten the most buzz here. U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., said Putin’s remarks made him feel like vomiting. House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said he felt “insulted” by Putin’s view.

Of course, the American exceptionalism mantra has been a political staple here for the past several years. Republicans and Democrats alike are proud to declare — with justification, I should add — that the United States remains the most exceptional nation on the planet.

We give more money than any other country on Earth to fight infectious diseases such as AIDS; we are the first nation to respond to disaster relief whenever and wherever it occurs; our nation was founded on the belief that we should be free from religious oppression; we pride ourselves in our allowing open and sometimes angry debate over government policy. I think that’s all pretty exceptional.

Can the Big Ol’ Russian Bear make such claims?

Have we made mistakes? Certainly. All great nations have skeletons in their closets. I daresay that Russia’s closet is quite a bit more full than ours, given that it’s existed for far longer. Then again, I suspect its skeletons would outnumber ours if you march forward from, say, 1776 to the present.

Vladimir Putin owes this country an apology.

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Sessions ‘not being partisan’?

U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., is using an interesting tactic in criticizing President Obama’s handling of the Syria crisis.

He said that President George W. Bush would have frightened Syrian dictator Bashar as-Assad enough to prevent the Syrians from using chemical weapons on innocent civilians.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2013/09/06/sen_sessions_if_bush_threatened_assad_he_wouldnt_have_used_chemical_weapons.html

Sessions assured a town hall audience, mind you, that he isn’t being partisan. “We have only one president at a time,” he said. But by golly, if the 43rd president had said the same thing the 44th president said in warning Assad, the dictator would be scared.

I think the senator, who’s as partisan as they come in his view of policy and politics, has thrown out the Mother of All Hypotheticals.

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Follow John Kerry’s lead, Mr. President

I’m beginning to think President Obama needs to change the way he views his administration.

Instead of referring to everything and everyone who works within the administration in the first person singular — as in “my national security team” or “my administration” — the president needs to start using the first person plural.

Bill McKenzie, a columnist and blogger for the Dallas Morning News, is on point with his view that Secretary of State John Kerry has been more “out front” on the Syria crisis than the president.

http://dallasmorningviewsblog.dallasnews.com/2013/09/obama-needs-the-moral-clarity-of-john-kerry-but-what-are-conservative-isolationists-thinking.html/

Obama needs to follow Kerry’s lead.

To do that, though, he’ll need to start adapting to the view that the administration and its policies don’t belong to the man at the top. It’s a shared responsibility. “Our administration,” or “our national security team” would be the more appropriate way to define the team that occupies the White House, the Pentagon, Foggy Bottom and all the other institutions that comprise the massive federal government.

It’s all been a part of one element of Barack Obama’s tenure in the White House that has bothered me. The president tends to treat the government he administers a tad too personally — as if it all belongs to him. He took ownership of the presidency the moment he took the oath of office. The reality, though, is that the office actually belongs to us, the people.

I’m sure y’all have heard him use the first person singular perhaps a bit too liberally during his more than four years in office. Well, he’s now facing arguably the worst crisis of his time in the White House since the very beginning, when he walked into a financial firestorm.

The Syria crisis is testing the president’s resolve. His secretary of state, however, seems to be speaking with tremendous moral authority, not to mention outrage over the Syrians’ use of chemical weapons.

The man in charge of things in D.C., Barack Obama, ought to adopt John Kerry’s outlook — while understanding that everyone on duty at this moment has a shared responsibility to find a solution to this crisis.