Lines don’t mean anything to President Obama.
Domestically, he has no trouble stepping outside the lines of the law—even laws he championed—to suit his agenda.
When it comes to foreign policy, he has a red crayon he likes to pull out from time to time—but it’s the washable kind. No permanent lines.
Watch his Secretaries of State, past and present. They make statements and speeches and hand out red “reset” buttons, but neither Hillary Clinton nor John Kerry has influenced any of the world’s current set of bad actors—not Syria’s Bashar al-Assad; not Iran’s Hassan Rouhani; and as we see in Ukraine this week, not Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
Obama drew a red line in Syria, then did nothing. In Iraq, and soon to be Afghanistan, Obama has left freedom fighters all on their own. There is no indication that this Administration’s wait-and-see approach with Iran is curbing that regime’s drive for nuclear capabilities. Our mission in Benghazi is attacked, our ambassador and three colleagues killed, and two years later, no one has been held to account.
Why exactly would Putin have a second thought about what Obama says?
As the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Representative Mike Rogers (R-MI), said Sunday, “I think Putin is playing chess, and I think we’re playing marbles.”
The environment set up by this Administration made what is happening in Crimea possible. And it will make other dangerous situations possible. Whether it is rogue states in search of nuclear weapons or aggressor nations wanting to reclaim territories they once controlled, someone will always be threatening freedom.
We need not be the world’s policeman, but the world will be a much more dangerous place if we exit the stage. Unfortunately, President Obama has been doing just that for more than five years. And it’s not just his appeasement and lack of follow through when facing off with hostile regimes and tyrants; it is also his complete disregard for America’s military readiness and strength. The only budget where Obama seems to find opportunities to reduce the size of government is the one belonging to the U.S. military. Across all military services, capabilities have decreased since he took office.
Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, and al-Qaeda are watching.