Ya but you're talking about his record as President, which means when we bring up several good examples of Putin getting his way over Bush that it directly and factually contradicts what you saying. Do you not understand that reality is not just what you choose it to be?
Well last August during the Putin-Obama staredown over Syria, Obama blinked.
Putin has little respect for Obama. Obama is a pantywaist when it comes to foreign affairs.
Putin held G.W. Bush in awe. But I'm sure Condoleezza Rice gave Bush some pointers how to deal with KGB thugs.
Next to Hillary Kerry is probably one of the worse Sec of State we ever had..........That is the scary part.
Good article, Apacherat.
However, Putin wasn't the president of Russia during most of Obama's first term in office, Dmitry Medvedevf was and they were both on very good terms. So Obama never really had to deal with Putin until 2012. Unfortunately, there was an embarrassing incident for Obama involving Mediedvf during the run up to his 2012 campaign that set the tone for Obama-Putin relations when Putin resumed the presidency.
Trivia question: What was the embarrassing incident?
Rice was nothing but a mouthpiece kept around to tell Bush's lies. She will forever be the "mushroom cloud" girl to me.
They might have disliked him but unlike Obama they respected him.
Obama doesn't bomb Syria, then he blinked in the face of Putin
If Obama had bombed Syria, he'd be a warmonger
For the record I think the "red line" comment was stupid, it was a bad move to make what was clearly a threat to use military force at some point in the future when we didn't know what the situation would be like at that point in the future. But credit where credit is due he managed to get something out of it in the end by arranging this deal to dismantle Syria's chemically weapons without the US having to engage in military action, something which is of course far cheaper for us and less dangerous to our military.
And really at the end of the day did we not achieve the best outcome to that crisis? Mistakes were made on the way there for sure but ultimately we got to a point where we arranged a diplomatic deal that allowed us to help oversee the peaceful destruction of a nation's WMD stockpiles. What other outcome would have been better?
More Obama White House revisionism.
And your boy Johnson had 58,000 in Nam.......Your point is???
Was it when the microphone was still on and Obama told Dmitry Medvedev that once he's reelected he can have more "flexibility" of appeasing Russia ?
EXCERPT
The Seduction of George W. Bush
How the president of good and evil bromanced Vladimir Putin. And how a warm friendship turned to ice.
>"n the summer of 2006, President George W. Bush was relaxing at Camp David with the visiting prime minister of Denmark when the conversation turned to Vladimir Putin. It had been five years since Bush memorably peered into the Russian leader's soul. But now hope had been replaced by exasperation.
Bush regaled his guest with stories of aggravating private dealings with Putin that underscored their growing rift. Bush was astonished that Putin had tried to influence him by offering to hire a close friend of the president's and he found Putin's understanding of the world disconnected from reality. "He's not well informed," Bush groused. "It's like arguing with an eighth grader with his facts wrong."
Putin was on his mind because Russia was about to host the annual summit of the G-8 powers for the first time and Bush feared that the session would be dominated by questions about why an undemocratic nation was hosting a gathering of democratic nations. Bush had been trying to get Putin to relax his authoritarian rule to no avail. "I think Putin is not a democrat anymore," Bush lamented a few weeks later to another visitor, the prime minister of Slovenia. "He's a tsar. I think we've lost him."
Whether Bush or anyone else ever actually "had" Putin in the first place is debatable at best. But the story of Bush's eight-year pas de deux with the master of the Kremlin, reconstructed through interviews with key players and secret notes and memos, offers lessons for President Obama as he struggles to define his own approach to Putin and shape the future of the two nuclear powers. The last few months have become another dramatic juncture in the volatile Russian-American relationship, with Moscow defying Washington by offering shelter to national security leaker Edward Snowden, Obama becoming the first president to cancel a Russian-American meeting in more than 50 years and then, suddenly, improbably, the Kremlin throwing the American leader a lifeline when his confrontation with Syria took a wrong turn.
Looked at in the context of time, Obama's own dashed aspirations to build a new partnership with Moscow seem to echo his predecessor's experience. Bush thought he could forge more meaningful ties with Russia in his early years, particularly after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and for a time seemed to make significant headway with a nuclear arms treaty and cooperation on Afghanistan, only to become frustrated as the two countries diverged, eventually coming into overt diplomatic conflict during the Georgia war of 2008. Obama likewise came into office intent on pushing the "reset" button and similarly saw early progress with a nuclear arms treaty and cooperation on Afghanistan, only to find his efforts increasingly thwarted by the same Putinist revanchism. Whether the recent Russian-American collaboration to disarm Syria's chemical stocks will turn out to be a more enduring foundation for change remains to be seen.
If Obama were to look back at his predecessor's experience, though, he might recognize how easy it is to misjudge Moscow's intentions by superimposing American ideas of what Russian interests should be rather than understanding how Putin and his circle of KGB veterans and zero-sum-gamers actually see those interests. Again and again, Bush and Obama have assessed Russia through an American prism and come away disappointed that the view from the Kremlin looks different than they thought it ought to.
* * *
Bush came to office wary of Putin -- "one cold dude," he called him privately -- but he was interested in forging a working relationship if only because at the time he saw the real threat to the United States elsewhere. When he met with Russia scholars before his first encounter with Putin in 2001, Michael McFaul, then a Stanford University professor and later Obama's ambassador to Moscow, told him that keeping Russia "inside our tent" was the best course.
Bush agreed. "You're absolutely right," he said, "because someday we're all going to be dealing with the Chinese." ..."<
Continue -> The Seduction of George W. Bush
I read the Russian newspapers. The Kremlin looks at Kerry as a traitor to his own country. They don't respect him.
Yes, Kerry was on their side, the communist side during the 1970's but they still look at Kerry being no better than Jane (Hanoi) Fonda. How can anyone respect anyone who backstabs their own troops while they are still on the battlefield ?
Was it when the microphone was still on and Obama told Dmitry Medvedev that once he's reelected he can have more "flexibility" of appeasing Russia ?
Sadly I believe he is and Putin knows it. I don't believe it would pull this crap if GWB was still president........Say what you want about President Bush. He had the respect of the European nations........Obama does not have that respect and unless things change we could be in another Cod War situation.
Obama got Syria to dismantle its chemical weapons without firing a shot. Your little narrative simply doesn't square up with reality.
One only has to look at a current map to know that N Vietnam was a threat.And your boy Johnson had 58,000 in Nam.......Your point is???
Sadly I believe he is and Putin knows it. I don't believe it would pull this crap if GWB was still president........Say what you want about President Bush. He had the respect of the European nations........Obama does not have that respect and unless things change we could be in another Cod War situation.
Sadly I believe he is and Putin knows it. I don't believe it would pull this crap if GWB was still president........Say what you want about President Bush. He had the respect of the European nations........Obama does not have that respect and unless things change we could be in another Cod War situation.
You know, you're not allowed to take facts that are inconvenient for you and claim "revisionism" and expect to be taken seriously.
Which, of course, isn't what was meant by that comment, but far be it from you to engage in "revisionism." :lamo
You have a Cold War mentality.
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