President Barack Obama must know better regarding the crisis in Ukraine, but he insists on reciting the propaganda lines drafted by his neoconservative and “liberal interventionist” advisers blaming everything on Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Perhaps, Obama just doesn’t have the nerve to go against Official Washington’s “conventional wisdom” no matter how misguided it is. The last time that Obama went against the grain in a decisive way was when he objected to the Iraq War in 2002, but then, of course, he was just a state senator in Illinois.
Watching his behavior in the White House over the past six-plus year, I’ve come to suspect that – if he had been a national politician amid the Iraq War fever – he would have gotten in line just like ambitious Sens. Hillary Clinton, John Kerry and Joe Biden did. Even as President, a position that gives him enormous power to push back against Official Washington’s “group think,” he won’t.
Instead Obama spouts stupid propaganda stuff that is ultimately damaging to the American Republic. At a moment when Obama needs Putin’s help in addressing dangerous crises in the Middle East – particularly to deal with advances by Al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front and Al-Qaeda’s hyper-violent spinoff, the Islamic State – Obama insists on joining in more misrepresentations about the Ukraine crisis.