Wingnuts: We Don't Want War, But Everything Else Makes Obama a Wuss

The Pilot Newspaper: Opinion

The Republicans and their captive media are saying a great many things about the Russian incursion into Ukraine, but there’s one thread that runs through it all: It’s not Vladimir Putin’s fault, it’s all Barack Obama’s.

For example, some commentators, such as The Washington Post’s Mark Thiessen and Commentary’s Jonathan Tobin, claim that President Obama’s “weakness” in Syria somehow “emboldened” Putin to invade Ukraine.

Oh, really? What weakness was that? The weakness where, under threat of U.S. bombing, the Assad regime caved and agreed to dismantle its chemical weapons stockpile?

Or maybe they think it was “weakness” not to defy the will of the American people and put American boots on the ground in a complicated, many-sided religious-based conflict which would have us fighting alongside elements of al-Qaida. That would have been insane recklessness and wrong-headed adventurism that would make the Iraq debacle look like the pinnacle of strategic brilliance, but it wouldn’t look weak.

According to a story in The Washington Post, Sen. John McCain called the Russian aggression “the ultimate result of a feckless foreign policy in which nobody believes in America’s strength anymore,” even as he admitted that the U.S. “does not have a realistic military option to force Russian troops to withdraw.”

In another forum, McCain suggested sanctions on Russia, which the administration is considering. How much you want to bet if they do what McCain suggests, he’ll still call them weak?

At least the folks at Fox News had a more measured response. “Even if [the president] wanted to help … we simply don’t have the ground forces to do it,” said Bill O’Reilly. “And confronting the Russians in the air would lead to major hostilities that the USA cannot afford right now.”

Frequent Foxista Charles Krauthammer agreed: “Well, obviously it’s beyond our control. The Russians are advancing. There is nothing that will stop them. We are not going to go to war.”

Oh, wait, my mistake. Those quotes from Fox were from 2008, when the Russians invaded another neighbor, Georgia. You know, back when we had a president of Fox’s preferred party, a president who claimed to have “looked into Putin’s soul,” a president who still bears no blame for anything he did in the minds of the right.

Now, when “that one” is in the White House, we have Steve Doocy saying that the president “hasn’t done much” to solve the situation, and Bill O’Reilly claiming that the crisis occurred because Obama has “lost moral authority.”

Meanwhile, the Fox Nation website put up a page of video of Putin doing, as they described it, “macho things,” including the inevitable horseback riding with his shirt off. Frankly, the only thing creepier that Putin’s constantly releasing videos of his shirtless self is the right’s panting obsession with his “manliness.”

Perhaps the purest expression of the right wing’s attitude was capsulized by Mister 9/11 himself, Rudy Giuliani. Speaking to Fox’s Neil Cavuto, Rudy revealed that what he really admires and wants in an executive is ruthless dictatorial strong-arming:

“Putin decides what he wants to do and he does it in half a day, right? He decided he had to go to their parliament. He went to their parliament. He got permission in 15 minutes. He makes a decision and he executes it, quickly. Then everybody reacts. That’s what you call a leader. President Obama, he’s got to think about it. He’s got to go over it again. He’s got to talk to more people about it.”

There you have it, folks. To the right, Obama’s problem is that he’s not more like the dictator Vladimir Putin. Of course, when the president does do something, they scream that he’s worse than Hitler.

I’ve been critical in these pages of President Obama’s foreign policy, but I can tell you this, without reservation: I am so glad right now that he’s president and that John McCain and Rudy Giuliani aren’t.

John Kerry’s gone to Kiev and other capitals to show our support for the current Ukraine government and drum up more, our NATO allies are meeting to discuss how to deal with the crisis, the G7’s suspending preparations for the planned G8 summit in Sochi. And all the while, the president works with our international partners to create further steps to isolate Russia as punishment for its aggression.

Meanwhile, the saber-rattlers claim not to want military action, but criticize every option short of it as puny and weak — even options they themselves have suggested.

As Barney Frank once said, in a saying that should be the slogan of the Democratic Party, “We’re not perfect, but they’re nuts.”

Obama Derangement Syndrome In Full Glorious Flower

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People sometimes ask me if I have trouble coming up with ideas for columns. The answer is, "sometimes."

But I know that all I have to do is fire up the trusty Web browser, head on over to Fox News or Drudge Report or any of a dozen lesser online right-wing loony bins, where I'll often find the latest outbreak of what's come to be called Obama Derangement Syndrome for our pointing and mocking pleasure.

Take, for example, a recent interview conducted in the Fox News Echo Chamber by Sean Hannity, who indulged in yet another one of those head-wagging rounds of the game "Ain't Obama Awful/Yes, He Sure Is" with syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer.

Hannity started with his usual prep-school-bully sneer, complaining about the president of the United States taking a "tropical vacation" during the so-called "fiscal cliff" crisis. By "tropical vacation," of course, Hannity meant "spending Christmas with his family in the American state where he was born." This is something I'm sure quite a few Americans did, Hannity included.

But remember, we're dealing with Fox News here, the Hot Zone for Obama Derangement Syndrome. No activity of this president, no matter how normal or benign, is beyond the ability of a raging ODS sufferer like Hannity to be outraged over.

On to Krauthammer, whom I've found hard to take seriously since a 2010 column in which he inveighed mightily against a value-added tax (VAT) which he predicted was coming. He urged his right-wing readers to "get ready to fight" against the VAT.

Funny thing is, no one in Congress or the administration had proposed any such thing, nor have they since, nor are they likely to. For an ODS sufferer, however, exhorting people to fight against legislation that doesn't exist is a classic symptom of the disease.

Another symptom is a deep paranoia combined with extreme cognitive dissonance, leading the sufferer to ascribe to his imagined antagonist both complete incompetence and fiendish craftiness.

Krauthammer credited Mr. Obama with no less an accomplishment than "shattering" the Republican Party and plunging it into civil war: "He's been using this, and I must say with great skill - and ruthless skill and success - to fracture and basically shatter the Republican opposition. ... His objective from the very beginning was to break the will of the Republicans in the House, and to create an internal civil war. And he's done that."

Wow. Not bad for a mere "community organizer" who was playing golf on vacation. It calls to mind the Honorable John McCain's complaint during his unsuccessful presidential campaign against Mr. Obama that the blame for rising gas prices could be laid at Obama's feet, even though he was, according to other McCain ads, only the inexperienced junior senator from Illinois.

As I observed at the time, you don't want to make someone that powerful angry. Lord knows what he could do if he was really paying attention.

So, what does Krauthammer think the president should do, now that he has crushed his enemies, seen them driven before him, and heard the lamentation of their women?

Simple. He should give up. Accept Mitt Romney's non-plan of closing undefined loopholes to raise revenue, rather than raising tax rates on the wealthy, which was what the president said he was going to do during the election - an election, lest Krauthammer has forgotten, that he won. If Obama doesn't capitulate entirely, Krauthammer predicted, he'll be blamed for the "fiscal cliff" and go down in history as a "failed president."

Of course, Krauthammer also confidently predicted that Romney was going to eke out a win rather than losing in a landslide, because, according to him, Obama already was a "failed president." He also ignored the polls which show that more people will blame Republican intransigence for any failure to reach an agreement than blame the Democrats.

Here we have two more symptoms of ODS: (1) the unshakeable conviction that the consequence of losing an election is that the victorious side is still required to give you everything you want; and (2) the inability to learn from experience.

People like Hannity and Krauthammer never recognize that the last time they made predictions like this, they were wrong and the polls were right, and that maybe this blithe self-assurance is not confidence but delusional thinking.

Can ODS be cured? In the case of people like Krauthammer and Hannity, we may never know, because it's one of the few mental illnesses that's actually profitable for some of its sufferers.

But at least it gives me something to write about.