PrintJuly 12, 2009
Obama Grovels to Russia
The press, true to form, is hailing Obama's trip to Russia as statesmanlike. Reality, as usual, is different.
When Obama took a pass on missile defense and agreed with Russia's Medvedev to reduce our nuclear arsenal by one-third, he accomplished worse than nothing. He sold out our Eastern European allies, dumping a desperately needed missile defense plan for Poland. As he did so, he revised history, claiming we did not win the cold war. Obama said, "We don't have to diminish other people in order to recognize our role in that history." Yes, he said that. And it gets worse.
When queried in his press conference with Medvedev by Ben Feller of the Associated Press as to whether he trusted his Russian counterpart and whether he believed he's truly in charge, Obama said: "I trust President Medvedev." On the matter of whether Prime Minister and former President Vladimir Putin is really calling the shots, Obama was even more simpering: "My understanding is that President Medvedev is the president. Prime Minister Putin is the prime minister. And they allocate power in accordance with Russia's form of government, in the same way that we allocate power in the United States."
Can you imagine what the reaction would have been if Bush had displayed such stupidity and naivete? They would have ripped Bush to shreds. "Trust Medvedev" -- what foolishness. Groveling to Putin, eight years after Bush "looked into Putin's eyes."
Who can forget how the media derided and mocked George W. Bush when, after a 2001 visit, he said of Vladimir Putin, "I looked the man in the eye. I was able to get a sense of his soul, a man deeply committed to his country and the best interests of his country."
They pounded him relentlessly. Six years later the New York Times was still running headlines like "Mr. Bush Gets Another Look Into Putin's Eyes."
So it is amusing to watch the media groveling to Obama as Obama grovels before an evil despot. For eight years after Bush got a sense of Putin's soul, we know what he is. Putin is a KGB thug who has assassinated numerous journalists. Does Obama admire Putin's war in Grozny? There really is no word for this kind of stupidity. It's more than stupidity, it's just evil. The only nuclear reduction the Russians will undertake is selling more of their weapons to America's enemies.
Obama refused France when Sarkozy offered to host a Middle East peace conference later this year. Russia offered, and Obama said yes. Yet Russia backs Iran. Russia helped create the Israel/"Fakestinian" conflict (remember, the "Palestinian" nationality was created out of whole cloth in the 1960s) -- and they will host a "peace" conference? I ask you.
Putin praised Yaser Arafat. Back in 2003, Romanian intelligence chief Ion Mihai Pacepa, the highest ranking intelligence officer ever to have defected from the former Soviet bloc, clarified Arafat's Russian connections. As Romania's former spy chief, Pacepa has read Arafat's KGB file. He describes Arafat as "an Egyptian bourgeois turned into a devoted Marxist by KGB foreign intelligence." He says that Arafat was a KGB agent. According to Pacepa, Arafat "is a career terrorist, trained, armed and bankrolled by the Soviet Union and its satellites for decades." Pacepa described Moscow's plan to make Arafat the national leader of the Palestinians. And this was what Arafat has became, as he went on to conduct the greatest terror offensive of them all -- against Israel.
Arafat was trained at the Balashikha special-ops school in Russia. Pacepa also relates how "the KGB destroyed the official records of Arafat's birth in Cairo, replacing them with fictitious documents saying that he had been born in Jerusalem and was therefore a Palestinian by birth."
Putin was/is KGB to the bone.
And Obama said to Putin, "I am aware of not only the extraordinary work you have done on behalf of the Russian people in your previous role as prime minister -- as president -- but in your current role as prime minister."
Yes, invading Georgia was an extraordinary moment.
Obama appears weak. He is groveling to Russia. It is a sad performance from a President of the United States, who inside of a month aligned with Chavez-backed Zelaya in Honduras, turned a blind eye to the brutal crackdown of a historic revolution for freedom in Iran, called for ethnic cleansing for Jews in parts of Israel, and distributed 300 million of a promised 900 million dollars to the jihad in Gaza.
Pamela Geller is the editor and publisher of the Atlas Shrugs website and former associate publisher of the New York Observer.
