Thursday 22 December 2016

US Stuck With Russia, For Better or Worse

The Russians are Coming," "The Russians are Coming." You may think this is a review about the 1966 movie with Alan Arkin and Rob Reiner. Basically those Russians were really nice guys who won the hearts of their accidental American friends.
Fast forward.
Today the same liberals who loved the cold war Russians are apoplectic about the Putin Russians. Putin Russians, it seems, are a great evil with extraordinary cyber-hacking powers capable of undressing even the most secretive Democrats.
So what’s going on here.
It’s an Obama thing.
Remember the 2009 "reset"? Neither does he. Remember the 2012 hot mic "flexibility" comment? Never happened. Remember Romney calling the Russians our greatest threat and Obama making fun of him? Historically inoperative. No, all that counts now is that Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin have said nice things about each other and Hillary lost.
Everything else is just spin. And, never forget, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton never make mistakes — never, never, never. Let’s do a rewind.
The biggest issue in the Russian scare is Syria, a place where 400,000 people just died in a civil war. Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, and every person with a brain understands one basic truth about countries like Syria, Iraq, and Libya. They will only stay together when the "meanest s** of a b***h in the valley" is in charge. That would be Assad.
Ruthlessness holds. Appeasement leads to anarchy.
It may sound sad and cynical but we ought to learn something from history. So Putin, Assad and Obama’s friends in Iran got together to put down the revolt in Syria; bloody but doable. Then Obama stepped in to tell the world that Assad must go.
It doesn’t get dumber (or bloodier) than that. And that led to Obama’s "line in the sand" personal humiliation. But worse, it led to arming of rebels of dubious backgrounds. It gave them hope where there was none. It gave them battle days and bombing nights. It added years to an unwinnable rebellion and took the death toll from 100,000 to 400,000.
And it’s all on Obama. And since nothing is ever his fault — it had to be Putin’s fault.
And since candidate Trump made it clear he wouldn’t be arming those rebels, Obama made it clear that the new great evil is the Trump, Putin alliance.
All of a sudden 70 years of Democrats’ fascination with everything Russian (from FDR’s Uncle Joe Stalin to Bernie Sander’s honeymoon in Moscow) has evaporated in a "Great Satan" moment.
And let’s recognize that the greatest president-elect in American history, Donald Trump, was hugely responsible for ending this awful war. Why? Because by Nov. 9 everyone knew that the rebels would get no more arms and that it was time to negotiate safe passage out of Syria, possibly to Turkey.
Sadly, the once great city of Aleppo was reduced to rubble as a fitting symbol of "leading from behind" foolishness.
Have you seen the pictures? They remind us of Hiroshima after the war or Detroit after the Democrats. The assassination of Russia’s ambassador to Turkey? The last drop of blood on Obama’s hands from his Syrian humiliation.
And that brings us to cyber-hacking. There are two basic truths in today’s world of hacking. The first is that there is only one source that can be totally trusted to never print fake news — Wikileaks. And, second, mentally healthy people are greatly offended by others spreading lies about them.
Mentally unhealthy people are greatly offended by others telling the truth about them. So the leaked DNC emails that should have embarrassed Obama, Hillary and all people leftist only served to make them angry because they were true. They’re not embarrassed that Hillary got the questions before the debate. They just need to blame the leaks on Trump, Putin.
Are the Russians the hackers? Did Putin want Trump to win? And most importantly, can we trust Obama’s FBI and CIA. Maybe some day, after Obama is out of office, we’ll get a trustworthy investigation into the leaks, the emails, the servers and the bleaching.
In the meantime we’ll have to settle for knowing that Attorney General Loretta Lynch is just one more woman not dealt with fairly by Bill Clinton — on the tarmac, no less.
Which may be better than being totally forgettable.
Ms. Lynch will be forever known as the U.S. Department of Justice’s Lois Lerner.
As for the Russians, they will be with us for a long time. Sometimes we’ll be on the same side. Sometimes we’ll have "issues," — like Eastern Europe or energy.
The next movie? "The Adults Are Coming," "The Adults Are Coming."
Sid Dinerstein is a former chairman of the Palm Beach County Republican Party. He founded JBS Associates, a 600-person financial service company, and currently combines politics and business with Niger Innis in Inclusive Elections LLC, a firm that brings urban electorate voters to the GOP. He is the author of "Adults Only: For Those Who Love Their Country More Than Their Party." For more of his reports, Go Here Now.
 

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