RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/03/hillary-clinton-ukraine-2016-election-104213.html

As a freshman U.S. senator in 2002, Hillary Clinton reveled in the freedom of her new position outside the White House.

Being first lady “is more of a vicarious responsibility in that you are, like everyone in the White House, there because of one person, the president,” she told The Washington Post at the time. In the Senate, “there’s a lot more opportunity to express my own opinions, to work through what I would do and how I would do it.”

Twelve years later, Clinton is inextricably tied to another administration over which she yielded only partial influence. And as President Barack Obama grapples to resolve the expanding crisis in Ukraine, the situation underscores Clinton’s dilemma as she looks toward a potential presidential run in 2016: Separating from the White House is a very difficult proposition, if it’s possible at all.

As secretary of state through Obama’s first term, Clinton was in many ways the face of the administration’s “reset” policy with Russia, an effort to establish a new relationship that focused heavily on fostering the relationship with then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.

The administration’s allies argue that some positives emerged from the reset, and that trouble began with Vladimir Putin’s returned to the Russian presidency in 2012. Skeptics of the “reset” believe Putin never actually left the stage.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/resetting-russian-policy

With Russian armed forces seizing control of the Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, President Putin has sent a loud and clear message to President Obama. In effect, Putin contends the U.S. support for the political upheaval that dislodged a Kremlin ally, means little in the face of the Russian bear clearly intent on reacquiring “the near-abroad” – those nations lost with the dismemberment of the Soviet Union.

In fact, Putin said the breakup of the Soviet Union was “the great tragedy of the twentieth century.” He is intent on repairing that “damage” even if it means a “breach of international law,” as President Obama noted. The Ukraine is the linchpin in the Putin scenario. But the question is how does the Obama administration respond. So far, a pattern has emerged in deliberations over Syria, Libya or Iran. The administration tests two extreme hypotheses: let events unfold on their own without direct U.S. intervention or military action. Invariably, the national security team opts for the former.

However, the very establishment of this paradigm is false. There are many alternatives between appeasement and war, alternatives that seemingly are ignored by Obama policymakers.

For example, a show of force may be desirable in letting an enemy know what you are prepared to do. In the Ukraine, the president might consider the deployment of the Sixth Fleet in the Black Sea. Provocative? Yes, but it does demonstrate U.S. resolve in a matter of utmost seriousness.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/a-nation-with-no-options

As we watch the events unfolding in Ukraine there is one theme I continue to hear presented by the pundits in the news media – the United States has no options. It is unconscionable that we find ourselves in a foreign policy situation where there are no viable courses of action to be implemented. What is even more disturbing is that Russian President Vladimir Putin was fully aware of this going into his standoff.

America, the erstwhile superpower, finds itself outmaneuvered in a resurging Cold War-type showdown. It seems former GOP presidential candidate Governor Mitt Romney was right after all. I just wish he had defended his assertion with a tad more vigor.

Thanks to the announcement by US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, I do not see us committing any military forces in support of Ukraine. And Pentagon officials confirm they are not working on any contingency plans in that regard. Hagel’s force reduction announcement was made the beginning of last week – it didn’t take the Russian president long to see a gap to exploit.

We telegraphed our intent starting in 2008 allowing Putin to make his incursion into the former Soviet state of Georgia.

http://swtotd.blogspot.com/
“The most serious charge that can be brought against
New England is not Puritanism, but February.”
Joseph Wood Krutch (1893-1970)
American writer and environmentalist
Snow, cold weather, the Olympics and the deaths of celebrities were the main takeaways for the month of February. The month lived up to Joseph Krutch’s characterization. The blizzard of February 11-12 caused massive traffic jams from Atlanta to Boston. California had a drought, followed by mud slides. Twice, our flights to Florida were cancelled. Most schools in my neck of the woods have had seven snow-days this year, all of which must be made up before the little darlings are released in June. Even today, February 28, the thermometer read ten degrees.
As remarkable as many of the individual athletic feats were, the Olympics, in the opinion of this duffer, have become too commercial. Worse, we and other nations pay our athletes for the medals they receive – and then, of course, tax them. The opening and closing ceremonies have little to do with the spirit of amateur Olympics. Instead, they are an advertisement for the mythical wonders of the host country. Even in today’s world of outlandish excess, $51 billion is a lot of money – two or three times what the previous two Olympics combined cost. And with all that money, reports were that toilets didn’t work! Putting that $51 billion in perspective, Russia’s GDP per capita is roughly one fourth of ours. Modesty does not define this age.
The month began with the ascendancy of Janet Yellen to the chairmanship of the Federal Reserve. With her assertion that the economy was sluggish, markets sensed that tapering would cease or be done at a slower pace, thereby assuring that asset prices would continue to rise. The month ended with the scowling, scolding and outrageous Harry Reid calling out as liars poor souls who had lost their insurance because of ObamaCare. He sounded like an ill-tempered Senator McCarthy pouncing on Army Secretary Robert Stevens. If only some Democrat Senator, with the moral courage and innate decency of a Joseph Welch, would call him out. But the blood lines of politics seem stronger than decorum and respect. One must presume that Mr. Reid has no conscience; else he would have faded away in shame.

http://spectator.org/articles/57974/crimea-river

Sometime last Thursday, our intelligence community was telling its bosses that there was little or no chance that Russian President Putin would order his troops to seize control of Ukraine. These are the same guys that are telling us that Iran isn’t building nuclear weapons.

Fortunately, I have better sources. My friend Matt Keegan is a Russia expert and a serious student of their military. On Friday, Matt emailed me to point what should be in the front of the minds of President Obama and the other naïfs trying to figure out what was (and is) going on.

First, he said, Russia wants to control Ukraine because it believes it needs a land bridge to its strategic naval base at Sevastopol on the Black Sea. (The base has been there for about 200 years. When the Evil Empire fell apart, Russia began renting it from Ukraine.) He also pointed out that there are about eight major gas pipeline routes from Russia through Ukraine to reach Europe and Sevastopol. Without controlling Ukraine, Russia risks Ukrainian tariffs on gas or even pipeline sabotage. All of which meant, he said, that the Russians would send military forces into Ukraine to control some or all of that nation.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/14613#.UxWuGoWCUtV

This may be the excruciatingly worst time for Prime Minister Netanyahu to be visiting President Obama who clearly and, perhaps painfully, is aware of the ridicule many in the international corridors of power are heaping upon him.It is glaringly obvious that in five short years President Barack Hussein Obama has made U.S. foreign policy a figure of ridicule. This president’s red lines have come and gone and left America’s loyal allies, particularly Israel, deeply dismayed and apprehensive. Enemies have been immensely emboldened as the erstwhile policeman of the world has become in the eyes of many a paper tiger.

Whether this was perpetrated deliberately by Obama and his minions or is a display of utter ineptitude remains to be seen. What is happening now with the Ukraine is a de facto annexation by Putin’s Russia, first of the Crimea, with all its vital naval facilities at Sevastapol and, perhaps much of the eastern part of Ukraine.

The strategic control and annexation of Sevastopol, this preeminent warm water port, allows the Russian fleet the wherewithal to control not only the Black Sea but also entry into the Mediterranean and the Suez Canal. Indeed, Obama’s mishandling of the Egyptian “Arab Winter” has allowed Russia to oust American influence in that strategic area of the Middle East and return the situation to the much earlier period of the Soviet Union’s alliance with Gamal Nasser and, for a time, Anwar Sadat.

http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/grovermustgo/ On February 11, 2014, ten influential national security practitioners– including former Congressman Allen West, former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy, former CIA Director Jim Woolsey, former Pentagon Inspector General Joseph Schmitz and others– sent a letter to American Conservative Union board member Cleta Mitchell, urging her and her colleagues to […]

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2014/03/02/the-presidents-prophetic-threats-to-israel/#.UxUEAmmolX4.facebook In an extraordinary—and I don’t use the word in a complimentary way—interview with Jeffrey Goldberg of Bloomberg, President Obama follows his secretary of state in warning Israel and its leader that a failure to “make peace” now with the Palestinians will have terrible consequences. Israel is “more isolated internationally,” and will become more so; […]

SHOCKING STATISTICS ON THE STATE OF OUR MILITARY
What we have:
In 1990, the U.S. had a 546-ship Navy. Today we have 285 ships. China now has more ships in their Navy than the U.S.
In 1990, America had 76 Army brigades. Today we have 45.
Twenty years ago (in the 1990s), the Air Force had TWICE as many fighter squadrons and bombers as today.
What shape it’s in:
Most Navy ships and light attack vehicles were built 20 years ago. In the last 4 years, inspection failures for Navy ships have nearly tripled. 1 in 5 ships inspected are UNFIT for combat or severely degraded.

Diplomacy is the US president’s preferred weapon. Now he must prove he can wield it

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ca3e8250-a067-11e3-8557-00144feab7de.html#axzz2utpBBQRJ

In the dying days of the Soviet Union, President George H W Bush gave a speech in Kiev urging Ukrainian nationalists not to provoke Moscow. US conservatives dubbed it his “chicken Kiev” speech. Having long since been branded America’s appeaser-in-chief, President Barack Obama now confronts his own chicken Kiev moment. Can Mr Obama stand up to Vladimir Putin, the Russian fox circling the chicken coop? It is unclear whether he has the will and the skill – let alone the means – to do so. Yet the future of his presidency depends on it. There can be little doubt that Mr Putin wants to restore the boundaries of the Russian empire. Mr Obama must somehow find a way to frustrate him.

It will require a very different Mr Obama from the semi-detached one the world has grown used to. Even before Mr Obama became president, critics accused him of appeasing a revanchist Russia. John McCain, his Republican opponent, seized on Russia’s semi-invasion of Georgia in 2008 as an example of where he would draw the line against Moscow’s expansionist creep. Mr Obama’s unwillingness to match his opponent’s hawkishness chimed far better with the US public mood. Americans were tired of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Mr Obama promised to end them. He has done so.

If anything, Americans are even warier of entanglements today. Yet Russia’s occupation of the Crimea dramatically changes the landscape. Everything that Mr Obama wants – nation building at home, a nuclear deal with Iran, a quiescent Middle East and the pivot to Asia – hinges on how he responds to Mr Putin. At the start of his presidency, Mr Obama offered to “reset” US-Russia relations. That is now in tatters. Along with many others, Mr Obama has consistently underestimated Mr Putin’s readiness to challenge the status quo. As recently as last Thursday, the White House dismissed predictions of a Russian incursion into Crimea. In a 90-minute phone call on Saturday, Mr Putin hinted to Mr Obama he was prepared to extend Russia’s Crimean occupation into eastern Ukraine. It would be naive to assume he will not.