The
Washington Post
“Russia hits Assad’s foes,
angering U.S.”
— Headline, Wall Street Journal, Oct. 1
If it had the wit, the Obama administration would be not
angered, but appropriately humiliated. President Obama has, once again, been
totally outmaneuvered by Vladimir Putin. Two days earlier at the United Nations, Obama had
welcomed the
return, in force, of the Russian military to the Middle East — for the first
time in decades — in order to help fight the Islamic State.
The ruse was transparent from the beginning. Russia is not
in Syria to fight the Islamic State. The Kremlin was sending fighter planes,
air-to-air missiles and SA-22 anti-aircraft batteries. Against an Islamic State
that has no air force, no planes, no helicopters?
Russia then sent reconnaissance drones over Western Idlib
and Hama, where there are no Islamic
State fighters. Followed by bombing attacks on Homs and other
opposition strongholds that had nothing to do with the Islamic State.
Indeed, some of these bombed fighters were U.S.
trained and equipped. Asked if we didn’t have an obligation to
support our own allies on the ground, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter bumbled
that Russia’s actions exposed its policy as self-contradictory.
Carter made it sound as if the Russian offense was to have
perpetrated an oxymoron, rather than a provocation — and a direct challenge to
what’s left of the U.S. policy of supporting a moderate opposition.
The whole point of Russian intervention is to maintain
Assad in power. Putin has no interest in fighting the Islamic State. Indeed,
the second round of Russian air attacks was on
rival insurgents opposed to
the Islamic State. The Islamic State is nothing but a pretense for Russian
intervention. And Obama fell for it.
Just three weeks ago, Obama
chided Russia for
its military buildup, wagging his finger that it was “doomed to failure.” Yet
by Monday he was publicly welcoming Russia to join the fight against the
Islamic State. He not only acquiesced to the Russian buildup, he held an
ostentatious meeting with Putin on the subject, thereby marking the ignominious
collapse of Obama’s vaunted campaign to isolate Putin diplomatically over
Crimea.
Putin then showed his utter contempt for Obama by
launching his air campaign against our erstwhile anti-Assad allies not 48 hours
after meeting Obama. Which the U.S. found out about when a Russian general
knocked on the door of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and delivered a brusque
demarche announcing that the attack would begin within an hour and warning the
U.S. to get out of the way.
In his subsequent
news conference, Carter averred that he found such Russian behavior
“unprofessional.”
Good grief. Russia, with its inferior military and
hemorrhaging economy, had just eaten Carter’s lunch, seizing the initiative and
exposing American powerlessness — and the secretary of defense deplores what?
Russia’s lack of professional etiquette.
Makes you want to weep.
Consider: When Obama became president, the surge in Iraq
had succeeded and the United States had emerged as the dominant regional actor,
able to project power throughout the region. Last Sunday, Iraq
announced the
establishment of a joint intelligence-gathering center with Iran, Syria and
Russia, symbolizing the new “Shiite-crescent” alliance stretching from Iran
across the northern Middle East to the Mediterranean, under the umbrella of
Russia, the rising regional hegemon.
Russian planes roam free over Syria attacking Assad’s
opposition as we stand by helpless. Meanwhile, the U.S. secretary of state beseeches
the Russians to
negotiate “de-conflict” arrangements — so that we and they can each bomb our
own targets safely. It has come to this.
Why is Putin moving so quickly and so brazenly? Because
he’s got only 16 more months to push on the open door that is Obama. He knows
he’ll never again see an American president such as this — one who once told the
General Assembly that
“no one nation can or should try to dominate another nation” and told it
again Monday of
“believing in my core that we, the nations of the world, cannot return to the
old ways of conflict and coercion.”
They cannot? Has he looked at the world around him — from
Homs to Kunduz, from Sanaa to Donetsk — ablaze with conflict and coercion?
Wouldn’t you take advantage of these last 16 months if you
were Putin, facing a man living in a faculty-lounge fantasy world? Where was
Obama when Putin began bombing Syria? Leading a U.N. meeting on countering
violent extremism.
Seminar to follow.
