THE LEFT'S LATEST BOOGEYMAN MEANS ... YOU'RE A HYPOCRITE
(A late aside: I may have — by not crediting the author at the top — intimated I wrote this. There may have been a time when I would have, but I didn't. This was written by Ted R. Bromund, a senior research fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Thatcher Center for Freedom. It appeared as an editorial in Newsday on January 30, 2017. My apologies for any misunderstanding, and my apologies to Mr. Bromund. — GPJ)
(A late aside: I may have — by not crediting the author at the top — intimated I wrote this. There may have been a time when I would have, but I didn't. This was written by Ted R. Bromund, a senior research fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Thatcher Center for Freedom. It appeared as an editorial in Newsday on January 30, 2017. My apologies for any misunderstanding, and my apologies to Mr. Bromund. — GPJ)
The left has a new boogeyman: Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin.
Russian hackers, many liberals say, cost Hillary Clinton the election.
Russia is certainly a bad actor. I only wish the left had
noticed years ago. And no, I don’t excuse conservatives who fall for the
Russian lure: They should know better.
As for Clinton’s electoral loss, I doubt Russia is to blame.
It’s hard for either party to win three elections in a row. Also, Clinton
wasn’t popular, and she ran a bad campaign. But if you are a liberal who blames
Russia, here are a few questions for you about the last eight years:
Were you skeptical when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
began the “reset” of relations with Russia on March 6, 2009?
Did it bother you that the U.S.-Russian Bilateral
Presidential Commission, set up in July 2009, featured Vladislav Surkov — one
of the architects of Putin’s regime — offering the United States advice on how
to manage the media and civil society?
Did it concern you when President Obama canceled U.S.
missile defenses in Poland and the Czech Republic on Sept. 17, 2009 — the 70th
anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland?
Were you troubled when Mr. Obama signed the New START treaty
— which required no cuts in Russian nuclear forces — with Russia on April 8,
2010?
Were you worried when a microphone caught Obama telling
then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on March 26, 2012, that he’d have “more
flexibility” after the 2012 elections?
Did you think it was a bad sign when Russia kicked the U.S.
Agency for International Development aid agency out of the country in September
2012, shortly thereafter quit a program on weapons of mass destruction and
expelled pro-democracy nongovernmental organizations?
Were you disappointed when Obama mocked Mitt Romney on Oct.
22, 2012, when Romney said he viewed Russia as the United States’ foremost
geopolitical foe?
Did you think it was dangerous when the Magnitsky Act, which
targeted human rights abusers, passed only as part of a December 2012 deal that
gave the White House what it wanted — closer trade ties with Russia? Or when
the White House gutted the act by applying it to only 18 low-level officials?
Did you suspect that Russia might not be friendly when
WikiLeaks collaborator Edward Snowden fled to Moscow on June 23, 2013?
How about when massive Russian hacks of the White House and
the State Department were exposed in October 2014?
Did you think Obama was wrong to oppose the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee’s unanimous support in March 2015 for helping Ukraine
resist Russia by supplying Kiev with lethal military aid?
Did you see a strong U.S. response when Russia advanced
farther into Georgia, in violation of the cease-fire terms of Russia’s 2008
invasion, in July 2015?
Does it trouble you the United States took Russia’s side in
the Syrian civil war by agreeing, as Obama put it in December 2015, to respect
Iran’s “equities” — in other words, the rule of Syrian dictator and killer
Bashar Assad?
Did you hear the United States speak out strongly when a
British investigation in January 2016 implicated Putin in the killing — in
London, with radioactive polonium — of Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko?
Or when repeated reports, starting this past July, exposed a
Russian doping conspiracy at all recent Olympic Games?
Were you suspicious when Russia transferred air defense systems
to Iran in October, thereby helping to insulate Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran?
And were you embarrassed when John Kerry ended his tenure as
secretary of state pathetically trying to negotiate a Syrian cease-fire with
the Russians, a deal that leaves Assad in power?
If you weren’t worried about Russia then, but you are now —
well, you’re not wrong to worry.
But you are a hypocrite.
Ted R. Bromund is a
senior research fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Thatcher Center for
Freedom.
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