"Feckless" Obama

I heard the word on the radio this morning, and now here is Bret Stephens in the Wall Street Journal:

Vladimir Putin seized Ukraine's Crimean peninsula on Thursday, and Barack Obama delivered a short statement about it on Friday. The former tells us nothing we didn't know already about Russia's strongman. The latter tells us everything we need to know about a weak president's feckless foreign policy. 

Let's take a look at what Mr. Obama had to say:... 

""We've made clear that they can be part of an international community's effort to support the stability and success of a united Ukraine going forward, which is not only in the interest of the people of Ukraine and the international community, but also in Russia's interest."  

In case Mr. Obama hadn't noticed, Mr. Putin isn't exactly keen on "the stability and success of a united Ukraine going forward." It is precisely because a stable, successful and united Ukraine is inimical to Russia's ethnic, ideological and geopolitical interests that Mr. Putin seized the moment to strike.

 

I commented to my wife this morning that the liberal "intellectuals" in the Obama administration would undoubtedly all express fealty to the concept of multiculturalism, but they misunderstand what it means.   It does not mean that everyone can have ethnic festivals and don ethnic garb and we can all enjoy ethnic cultures and eat some good ethnic food and pat ourselves on the back about how tolerant we are of "diversity."   Real multiculturalism means that different peoples, different countries, different cultures, different tribes actually have different ends, different ideas of what the good life means.   We think that Putin's Russia ought to be interested in a peaceful Kumbaya-singing international community.   But they're not.   They're interested in reinvigorating the lost Russian Empire and enforcing their dominance over peoples that they have despised as inferior for hundreds of years.   Corrupt?   Yes.   Capable of great violence and great evil?   Yes.   Willing to take advantage of our weakness?   Absolutely.   Welcome to the real world, Mr. President.

 

For a President who seems perfectly at home being Machiavellian to fellow Americans (like Tea Party Republicans), he seems incapable of understanding that there are latter-day Princes out there, ready to march.