RKMBs Forums .::Important::. Politics and Current Events Ukraine faces deadliest crisis in decades

By YURAS KARMANAU and JIM HEINTZ

KIEV, Ukraine (AP) -- Protesters advanced on police lines in the heart of the Ukrainian capital on Thursday, prompting government snipers to shoot back and kill scores of people in the country's deadliest day since the breakup of the Soviet Union a quarter-century ago.

The European Union imposed sanctions on those deemed responsible for the violence and three EU foreign ministers held a long day of talks in Kiev with both embattled President Viktor Yanukovych and leaders of the protests seeking his ouster. But it's increasingly unclear whether either side has the will or ability to compromise.

Yanukovych and the opposition protesters are locked in a battle over the identity of Ukraine, a nation of 46 million that has divided loyalties between Russia and the West. Parts of the country - mostly in its western cities - are in open revolt against Yanukovych's central government, while many in eastern Ukraine back the president and favor strong ties with Russia, their former Soviet ruler.




Protesters across the country are also upset over corruption in Ukraine, the lack of democratic rights and the country's ailing economy, which just barely avoided bankruptcy with a $15 billion aid infusion from Russia.

The clashes in central Kiev may have only hardened protesters to continue their push for Yanukovych's resignation and early presidential and parliamentary elections. Despite the violence, people streamed toward the square Thursday afternoon as other protesters hurled wood, refuse and tires on barricades.

"The price of freedom is too high, but Ukrainians are paying it," said Viktor Danilyuk, a 30-year-old protester. "We have no choice, the government isn't hearing us."

At least 101 people have died this week in the clashes in Kiev, according to protesters and Ukrainian authorities, a sharp reversal in three months of mostly peaceful protests. Now neither side appears willing to compromise.

Thursday was the deadliest day yet at the sprawling protest camp on Kiev's Independence Square, also called the Maidan. Snipers were seen shooting at protesters there - and video footage showed at least one sniper wearing a Ukraine riot police uniform.

One of the wounded, volunteer medic Olesya Zhukovskaya, sent out a brief Twitter message - "I'm dying" - after she was shot in the neck. Dr. Oleh Musiy, the medical coordinator for the protesters, said she was in serious condition after undergoing surgery.

Musiy told The Associated Press that at least 70 protesters were killed Thursday and over 500 were wounded in the clashes - and that the death toll could rise further.

In addition, three policemen were killed Thursday and 28 suffered gunshot wounds, Interior Ministry spokesman Serhiy Burlakov told the AP.

The National Health Ministry said a total of 75 people died in the clashes Tuesday and Thursday, but did not give a breakdown. Earlier Thursday, however, it said 28 people had died.

There was no way to immediately verify any of the death tolls. Earlier in the day, an AP reporter saw the bodies of 21 protesters laid out near Kiev's protest camp.




French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, along with his German and Polish counterparts, said after a five-hour meeting with Yanukovych and another with opposition leaders that they discussed new elections and a new government, but gave no details. The three resumed meeting with Yanukovych late Thursday.

"For now, there are no results," said an opposition leader, Vitali Klitschko.

Video footage on Ukrainian television showed shocking scenes Thursday of protesters being cut down by gunfire, lying on the pavement as comrades rushed to their aid. Trying to protect themselves with shields, teams of protesters carried bodies away on sheets of plastic or planks of wood.

Protesters were also seen leading policemen, their hands held high, around the sprawling protest camp in central Kiev. Ukraine's Interior ministry says 67 police were captured in all. An opposition lawmaker said they were being held in Kiev's occupied city hall.

The ministry said late Thursday that police may use force to free the captured police, adding to fears of a massive confrontation already high after Yanukovych said the military could take part in an "anti-terrorist" operation in the country; officials frequently characterize the protesters as terrorists.

Hours later, however, the national parliament passed a measure forbidding the anti-terrorist measures from being put into place and calling for all Interior Ministry troops to return to their bases. But it was unclear how binding the move would be. Presidential adviser Marina Stavnichuk was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying the measure goes into effect immediately, but that a mechanism for carrying it out would have to be developed by the president's office and the Interior Ministry.




In Brussels, the 28-nation European Union decided in an emergency meeting Thursday to impose sanctions against those behind the violence in Ukraine, including a travel ban and an asset freeze against some officials. It was unclear whether the EU would consider any of the opposition figures to also have a share of responsibility in the bloodshed.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke with Russia's President Vladimir Putin and President Barack Obama about the crisis in Ukraine on Thursday evening. She briefed them about the trip of the three EU foreign ministers to Kiev, and all three leaders agreed that a political solution needs to be found as soon as possible to prevent further bloodshed.

Saying the U.S. was outraged by the violence, Obama urged Yanukovych in a statement to withdraw his forces from downtown Kiev immediately. He also said Ukraine should respect the right of protest and that protesters must be peaceful.

The Kremlin issued a statement with Putin blaming radical protesters and voicing "extreme concern about the escalation of armed confrontation in Ukraine."

The Russian leader called for an immediate end to bloodshed and for steps "to stabilize the situation and stop extremist and terrorist actions." He also sent former Russian ombudsman Vladimir Lukin to Ukraine to act as a mediator.




Although the first weeks of the protests were determinedly peaceful, radical elements have become more influential as impatience with the lack of progress grows. In their battles Thursday, those protesters, wearing hard hats and armed with bats and other makeshift weapons regained some territory on the fringes of Independence Square that police had seized earlier in the week.

One camp commander, Oleh Mykhnyuk, told the AP that protesters threw firebombs at riot police on the square overnight. As the sun rose, police pulled back, protesters followed them and police then began shooting at them, he said.

The Interior Ministry warned Kiev residents to stay indoors because of the "armed and aggressive mood of the people."

Yanukovych claimed that police were not armed and "all measures to stop bloodshed and confrontation are being taken." But the Interior Ministry later contradicted that, saying law enforcers were armed as part of an "anti-terrorist" operation.




A spokesman for Putin said Thursday that Moscow was dispatching human rights ombudsman Vladimir Lukin, a liberal and a former ambassador to the United States, to act as a mediator, although it was unclear whether either Yanukovych or the opposition would accept him in that role. Protesters see Russia as responsible for inducing Yanukovych to back off a deal for closer ties with the European Union - the issue that set off the protests - to try to restore the regional power it exercised during the Soviet era.

Russia appears increasingly frustrated with Yanukovych's inability to find a way out of the crisis.

Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said Russia will "try to do our best" to fulfill its financial obligations to Ukraine, but indicated Moscow would hold back on further bailout installments until the crisis is resolved.

"We need partners that are in good shape and a Ukrainian government that is legitimate and effective," he said.




Some signs emerged that Yanukovych is losing loyalists. The chief of Kiev's city administration, Volodymyr Makeyenko, announced Thursday he was leaving Yanukovych's Party of Regions.

"We must be guided only by the interests of the people, this is our only chance to save people's lives," he said, adding he would continue to fulfill his duties as long as he had the people's trust.

Another influential member of the ruling party, Serhiy Tyhipko, said both Yanukovych and opposition leaders had "completely lost control of the situation."

"Their inaction is leading to the strengthening of opposition and to human victims," the Interfax news agency reported him saying.

Prior to the clashes Thursday, the Ukrainian Health Ministry said 287 wounded had been hospitalized this week. But protesters who have set up a medical facility in a downtown cathedral so that wounded colleagues would not be snatched away by police say the number of wounded is significantly higher - possibly double or triple that.

The Caritas Ukraine aid group praised the protest medics but said many of the wounded will need long-term care, including prosthetics.





The clashes this week have been the most deadly since protests kicked off in November after Yanukovych shelved an association agreement with the European Union in favor of closer ties with Russia. Russia then announced a $15 billion bailout for Ukraine.

At the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Ukrainian alpine skier Bogdana Matsotska, 24, said she will not take part in Friday's women's slalom due to the developments in Kiev.

"As a protest against lawless actions made toward protesters, the lack of responsibility from the side of the president and his lackey government, we refuse further performance at the 2014 Sochi Olympic Games," her father and coach, Oleg Matsotskyy, wrote in a Facebook post.

http://www.breitbart.com

Putin has no interest in Ukraine!

Palin warned in 2008 that Putin may invade Ukraine if Obama elected: For those comments, she was mocked by the high-brow Foreign Policy magazine and its editor Blake Hounshell, who now is one of the editors of Politico magazine.

Russia, meanwhile, is overwhelmingly dependent on Europe as a customer. In 2012, Western Europe bought 76 percent of Russia's natural gas exports, according to the US Energy Information Administration. Oil and gas make up half of the Russian government's revenue. In 2012, Gazprom finished construction of a 760-mile-long twin pipeline system through the Baltic Sea, which circumvents Ukraine. It plans to expand that pipeline's capacity and is already constructing an additional pipeline through southern Europe that is expected to come online by 2018.

Last year, Russia's share of Europe's natural-gas imports rebounded somewhat from 25 percent to 30 percent – a trend Gazprom expects will continue.

"Gazprom has increased its share in European markets because Europe's domestic production has fallen in countries such as Britain and Norway ... we see no signals that the situation in Europe will change," Gazprom's deputy head Alexander Medvedev said Monday, as reported by Reuters. "Europe simply won't see the arrival of gas suppliers of such caliber [as Russia, Norway or Algeria] anytime soon."

RUSSIANS SINK OCHAKOV IN THE BLACK SEA



A Ukrainian Navy officer looks at the scuttled decommissioned Russian vessel "Ochakov" from the Black Sea shore outside the town of Myrnyi, western Crimea, Ukraine, Thursday, March 6, 2014. In the early hours of Thursday Russian naval personnel scuttled the decommissioned ship, blockading access for five Ukrainian Naval vessels now trapped inside of the Southern Naval Headquarters located in Myrnyi in Western Crimea as Russian war vessels patrolled just of the coast. The vessel was brought by Russian naval forces on the 4th of March towed by a tug boat while escorted by a warship and several gun boats. Marines from the Ukrainian navy heard a loud explosion in the early hours of last night coming from the vessel blocking a channel leading to the Black Sea. (AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic)

(CNN) All the self-righteous huffing and puffing in Washington over Ukraine [rings hypocritical to] European and especially Russian ears after the multiple U.S.-led invasions and interventions in other people's countries of recent years. It's difficult to say what is more astonishing: the double standards exhibited by the White House, or the apparent total lack of self-awareness of U.S. officials.

Secretary of State John Kerry risked utter ridicule when he declared it unacceptable to invade another country on a "completely trumped-up pretext," or just because you don't like its current leadership. Iraq in 2003 springs instantly to mind. This is exactly what George W. Bush and Tony Blair did when they "trumped up" the supposed threat posed by the hated Saddam Hussein's fabled weapons of mass destruction.

Like Saddam, the Taliban leadership in place in Afghanistan in 2001 was deeply objectionable. But instead of just going after Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda training camps after the 9/11 attacks, Bush (again abetted by Blair) opted for full-scale regime change. The lamentable consequences of that decision are still being felt 13 years later, not least by Afghan civilians who have been dying in ever greater numbers as the final Nato withdrawal approaches.

U.S. President Barack Obama, a former law professor who should know better, has charged Vladimir Putin, his Russian counterpart, with violating Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity, in breach of international law.


But it is Obama, following in Bush's footsteps, who has repeatedly and cynically flouted international law by launching or backing myriad armed attacks on foreign soil, in Libya, Somalia, Yemen and Pakistan to name a few, without U.N. security council authorization. It is Obama's administration which continues to undermine international law by refusing to join or recognize the International Criminal Court, the most important instrument of international justice to have been developed since 1945.

And it is Obama's State Department, principally in the person of Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, that fatally overplayed its hand in the run-up to last month's second Ukraine revolution. Nuland's infamous "f**k the EU" comment revealed the extent to which Washington was recklessly maneuvering to undermine Ukraine's elected pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych, by backing the Kiev street protesters' demands.

The EU had wanted to take things more gradually, for fear of provoking the very Russian reaction to which the U.S. now so strongly objects. When the foreign ministers of Germany, France and Poland, acting for the EU, negotiated a compromise agreement on February 22 that envisaged early elections, the crisis appeared to have been defused. Russia did not like the deal, but seemed ready to go along.

But within 24 hours, the opposition had torn up the agreement. It forced Yanukovych from power and sacked the government. To alarm in Moscow, where nightmarish World War II memories linger, Ukrainian neo-fascists were among those who seized control. They are now part of the new government in Kiev.

The U.S. almost immediately gave its blessing to what the Kremlin later described as a "coup d'etat" while the EU, knowing this was what Washington wanted, just looked on. Little wonder the Russians were furious at what they saw as a western double cross.



Sergei Lavrov, the Russian Foreign Minister, reflected these worries when he voiced "most serious concern" over Ukraine in phone calls to the French, German and Polish foreign ministers. "The opposition not only has failed to fulfil a single one of its obligations but is already presenting new demands all the time, following the lead of armed extremists and pogromists whose actions pose a direct threat to Ukraine's sovereignty and constitutional order,'' Lavrov said. But it was already too late.

Obama and Kerry seem to have calmed down a little since the crisis first broke. The self-righteous hyperbole about international rights is less evident, though it has not disappeared entirely. Obama has heard the many voices in the U.S. and beyond terming this the worst east-west crisis since the end of the Cold War -- and as the biggest foreign test of his presidency.

So now he's doing what he does best: talking. In his latest phone call to Putin, on Thursday this week, Obama put forward a plan to resolve the stand-off diplomatically. It includes direct talks between Moscow and Kiev, the return of Russian troops to their bases, and the deployment of international observers to ensure the rights of all ethnic groups, including Crimean Russians, are respected.

But don't hold your breath. Putin is in no hurry to back off or back down.

He has his tail up after a fortnight in which he exposed the hypocrisy and hollowness of much of western policy and politicians. His behavior, especially in Crimea, has been dangerous, wrong-headed and irresponsible in the extreme. In many ways, Putin is an unredeemed Cold War throwback. He is definitely not the sort of chap one would invite round for dinner, as a former British diplomat commented. The crisis could still explode in his and everyone else's face. But it was not unprovoked.

And the Russian leader has an eye for precedent. Similar battles over so-called "frozen conflicts" and the rights of isolated ethnic groups loom elsewhere on Russia's periphery, in Georgia, Moldova, Armenia, Nagorno-Karabakh, and maybe Belarus and the Baltic states too. Putin is putting down a marker, even as he plays Obama and Kerry for fools.

Whatever they think in Washington, and whatever the financial markets say, it's working for him personally. Latest opinion polls in Russia show Putin's popularity soaring. One of these days western leaders will drop the pious cant, learn to stop under-estimating him, and recognize Russia's leader-for-life as the canny, very dangerous, utterly unscrupulous opponent he is.

KHERSON, Ukraine – Ukrainians in the Kherson province just north of Crimea say Russian operatives have moved into the territory, an incursion which, if true, could show Vladimir Putin has more than just the Black Sea peninsula in his sights.

Residents of the village of Chonhar, in the Kherson region of Ukraine, say Russian troops showed up last week in armored personnel carriers, prompting the dispatch of Ukrainian troops and a standoff. The suspected Russian troops pulled back and established a checkpoint on a major road leading north from the Crimean capital of Simferopol.


"Local residents confronted the men and asked them who they were, but they refused to answer. We immediately suspected that they were from the Russian Armed Forces," a Chonhar resident who asked that only his first name, Anatoly, be used.

Several locals reported dozens of men wearing camouflage fatigues riding armored personnel carriers crossed over Crimea’s border to Kherson region, where they established a base along the Kharkiv-Simferopol highway on the Kherson region’s side of the border. The website Mashable reported Sunday that Russians may have planted land mines near Chonhar. That account included several photos of a purported Russian checkpoint, and one set up by Ukrainians some 15 miles north.

Ukrainian News also reported on Saturday that Chonhar residents said Russians had placed land mines near the town of 1,500. Local residents told the newspaper area residents responded by planting Ukrainian flags on their houses as a sign of protest.

Parents in Chonhar kept their children home from school last week as the standoff played out, Anatoly said. Villagers hung Ukrainian flags outside their homes and asked Kherson officials to set up a Ukrainian checkpoint to defend local residents. On Saturday, several hundred villagers banded together to block the road.

Most residents of the Kherson province are Russian speakers, with Ukrainian Surzhik (a mix of Russian and Ukrainian) spoken in rural areas. Yet 76 percent identify themselves as Ukrainians and 20 percent consider themselves Russian, according to government statistics.

Both Ukrainians and Russians say they fear a war breaking out with Russia. Yuri Odarchenko, Kherson's new governor, told FoxNews that Ukrainian forces are in control of the situation.

“Army checkpoints are operating on all land routes connecting Kherson region with the Crimean peninsula. They have been put there to provide security for residents of the region and the Ukrainian state,” Odarchenko said.

But those assurances have not allayed the fears of Kherson residents that the invasion under way in neighboring Crimea is widening. It is unclear what percentage of the Kherson region’s 1.1 million residents support the Kremlin’s move on Crimea, but those who talked to FoxNews.com were adamant that they neither want to fight Russia nor be absorbed into the Russian Federation.

There have been no separatist-driven conflicts in Kherson since Ukraine became independent in 1991, although Kiev’s move to make Ukrainian the official national language was contested in the region.

Residents of the province’s capital, Kherson, about 150 miles northwest of Chonhar, say they feel an artificial conflict has been foisted upon them, according to Valetntyna Krytsak, an accountant who traveled to Kiev to take part in the protests that led to the ouster of President Viktor Yanukovych.

She said the pro-Russian Ukrainian Choice organization operating under Viktor Medvedchuk, a Ukrainian ally of Putin, has been stirring up trouble in the city with an advertising campaign designed to pit supporters and foes of Russia's annexation against one another.

“On the one hand, people see Russia conducting the illegal annexation of Crimea, which threatens Ukraine's sovereignty,” Krytsak said. “On the other, they don’t want to wind up citizens of government where radical and nationalist groups are in ascendency, the scenario currently promoted by Russian-language television channels from Moscow.”

Obama’s response to Russian invasion not that different from Bush’s

(CNN) – Russia's invasion of Ukraine's Crimea peninsula echoes the Russian invasion of Georgia in 2008.

The situations were different in many ways of course – Vladimir Putin was prime minister of Russia then, not president, though he was widely regarded to have been calling the shots. But in both cases, Russia sent troops into another sovereign country, a former Soviet Socialist Republic, upsetting an American president who had tried to improve relations

This week Republicans slammed President Barack Obama's response to the crisis.

"I've always believed that this administration was incredible naive about Putin," said Sen. John McCain.

"Our lack of a concise and clear foreign policy has destabilized parts of the world," said former Sen. Jim DeMint.

"We have a weak and indecisive president that invites aggression," said Sen. Lindsey Graham.

Obama and former President George W. Bush are quite different, but it turns out, looking back to 2008, their responses to Russia's belligerence are not that unique.

"John Kerry is going to be traveling to Kiev to indicate our support for the Ukrainian people," Obama said this week.

"Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice is in Tbilisi, she's conferring with (then-Georgian President Mikheil) Saakashvili, and is expressing America's wholehearted support for Georgia's democracy," Bush said then.

Obama now: "The steps Russia has taken is a violation of Ukraine's sovereignty, Ukraine's territorial integrity."

Bush then (August 16, 2008): "We will continue to insist that Georgia's sovereignty, and independence, and territorial integrity be respected."

Back then, conservatives largely excused Bush.

"Obviously it's beyond our control," Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer said on Fox in 2008. "The Russians are advancing. There is nothing that will stop them. We are not going to go to war over Georgia."
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By Editorial Board



FOR FIVE YEARS, President Obama has led a foreign policy based more on how he thinks the world should operate than on reality. It was a world in which “the tide of war is receding” and the United States could, without much risk, radically reduce the size of its armed forces. Other leaders, in this vision, would behave rationally and in the interest of their people and the world. Invasions, brute force, great-power games and shifting alliances — these were things of the past. Secretary of State John F. Kerry displayed this mindset on ABC’s “This Week” Sunday when he said, of Russia’s invasion of neighboring Ukraine, “It’s a 19th century act in the 21st century.”

That’s a nice thought, and we all know what he means. A country’s standing is no longer measured in throw-weight or battalions. The world is too interconnected to break into blocs. A small country that plugs into cyberspace can deliver more prosperity to its people (think Singapore or Estonia) than a giant with natural resources and standing armies.



Unfortunately, Russian President Vladimir Putin has not received the memo on 21st-century behavior. Neither has China’s president, Xi Jinping, who is engaging in gunboat diplomacy against Japan and the weaker nations of Southeast Asia. Syrian president Bashar al-Assad is waging a very 20th-century war against his own people, sending helicopters to drop exploding barrels full of screws, nails and other shrapnel onto apartment buildings where families cower in basements. These men will not be deterred by the disapproval of their peers, the weight of world opinion or even disinvestment by Silicon Valley companies. They are concerned primarily with maintaining their holds on power.


Mr. Obama is not responsible for their misbehavior. But he does, or could, play a leading role in structuring the costs and benefits they must consider before acting. The model for Mr. Putin’s occupation of Crimea was his incursion into Georgia in 2008, when George W. Bush was president. Mr. Putin paid no price for that action; in fact, with parts of Georgia still under Russia’s control, he was permitted to host a Winter Olympics just around the corner. China has bullied the Philippines and unilaterally staked claims to wide swaths of international air space and sea lanes as it continues a rapid and technologically impressive military buildup. Arguably, it has paid a price in the nervousness of its neighbors, who are desperate for the United States to play a balancing role in the region. But none of those neighbors feel confident that the United States can be counted on. Since the Syrian dictator crossed Mr. Obama’s red line with a chemical weapons attack that killed 1,400 civilians, the dictator’s military and diplomatic position has steadily strengthened.

The urge to pull back — to concentrate on what Mr. Obama calls “nation-building at home” — is nothing new, as former ambassador Stephen Sestanovich recounts in his illuminating history of U.S. foreign policy, “Maximalist.” There were similar retrenchments after the Korea and Vietnam wars and when the Soviet Union crumbled. But the United States discovered each time that the world became a more dangerous place without its leadership and that disorder in the world could threaten U.S. prosperity. Each period of retrenchment was followed by more active (though not always wiser) policy. Today Mr. Obama has plenty of company in his impulse, within both parties and as reflected by public opinion. But he’s also in part responsible for the national mood: If a president doesn’t make the case for global engagement, no one else effectively can.


The White House often responds by accusing critics of being warmongers who want American “boots on the ground” all over the world and have yet to learn the lessons of Iraq. So let’s stipulate: We don’t want U.S. troops in Syria, and we don’t want U.S. troops in Crimea. A great power can become overextended, and if its economy falters, so will its ability to lead. None of this is simple.

But it’s also true that, as long as some leaders play by what Mr. Kerry dismisses as 19th-century rules, the United States can’t pretend that the only game is in another arena altogether. Military strength, trustworthiness as an ally, staying power in difficult corners of the world such as Afghanistan — these still matter, much as we might wish they did not. While the United States has been retrenching, the tide of democracy in the world, which once seemed inexorable, has been receding. In the long run, that’s harmful to U.S. national security, too.

As Mr. Putin ponders whether to advance further — into eastern Ukraine, say — he will measure the seriousness of U.S. and allied actions, not their statements. China, pondering its next steps in the East China Sea, will do the same. Sadly, that’s the nature of the century we’re living in.

The difference is that Bush, 4 months from the end of his presidency, left it for the incoming administration to determine the appropriate response.
Bush had a presidency that manifested a willingness to defend U.S. citizens and national interests throughout his 8 years, starting with invading Afghanistan after 9/11, and making threats and following through in Iraq.
So effective, in fact, that after the Iraq invasion, that Ghaddafi surrendered its nuclear weapons program to U.N. inspectors, rather than risk being next for a U.S. invasion. A nukes program that no one even knew they had!

I would also argue that Bush's response in August 2008 deterred Russia from seizing all of former-soviet Georgia, rather than just the two smaller pro-Russian provinces.

In contrast, Obama surrendered a missile defense shield for Poland and Czech republic and U.S. nuclear missiles and in return got absolutely noting from Russia, betraing Poland and the Czechs without even consulting them.
Obama abandoned Mubarek in Egypt, after his 30-plus years as a reliable ally of the United States, and enabled a radical Islamic governments to take control of that nation, that endangers both Israel and U.S. national interests.
Likewise, Obama helped an insurrection in Libya, even though Ghaddafi had been cooperative with the U.S. in recent years, and again allowed a radical Islamic government to take control of Libya as well.
And the flaccid response to the Benghazi attack, which even angered the Libyan government.
As a result, none of our European or middle allies trust the U.S., at least as long as Obama is in office.

Plus overly rapid retreats from Iraq and Afghanistan, leaving our allies there to stand alone against their enemies. Which is why they have already cut deals that undermine U.S. national interests with the Iranians and the Taliban, respectively.

This is what preceded the Russian invasion of Crimea. If there is a crisis, it is because Obama has invited it.

In sharp contrast to W. Bush, who stood up for U.S. national interests, even when it hurt him in the polls.

Bob Gates tells Obama's Ukraine critics to tone it down


While Republicans continue to indict President Obama's handling of the crisis in Ukraine as weak, indecisive, or otherwise incompetent, former Defense Secretary Robert Gates urged the president's critics on Sunday to hold their tongues at least until the crisis abates.

"In the middle of a major international crisis, that some of the criticism, domestic criticism of the president ought to be toned down, while he's trying to handle this crisis," said Gates, who led the Pentagon under Mr. Obama and his Republican predecessor, former President George W. Bush, during an interview on "Fox News Sunday."

Gates said it is unlikely that the president would have been able to prevent Russia's military incursion into Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula, either by moving more assertively to counteract Russia's influence in other global flash points or by increasing defense spending.


"My own view is, after all, Putin invaded Georgia when George W. Bush was president. Nobody ever accused George W. Bush of being weak or unwilling to use military force, so I think Putin is very opportunistic in these arenas," Gates explained. "I think that...even if we had launched attacks in Syria, even if we weren't cutting our defense budget, I think Putin saw an opportunity here in Crimea, and he has seized it."

The former defense secretary also predicted that Crimea, a province of Ukraine strategically situated on the Black Sea, would permanently slip into Russia's orbit as a result of the crisis.

Gates has defended Mr. Obama from critics of his foreign policy in the past, but if the comments from other Republicans on Sunday are any indication, his plea to leave politics at the water's edge will likely go unheeded.
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Bob Gates was Bush's defense secretary who is also a republican. Calling his response "Liberal media pro-Obama horseshit propaganda" doesn't even make sense.