Putin Not a Threat to U.S. Leadership, Obama Claims

The president who promised to change the way the United States behaves on the international stage is now facing a catastrophe in the Middle East. Barack Obama has brought us to the brink of war with Russia for the first time in decades, his policies have 11 million Syrians without a home, and he has presided over the growth of one of the most dangerous Islamic terrorist groups in history.

And yet, sitting down with Steve Kroft for a 60 Minutes interview, Obama seems to believe everything is just fine.

“You said a year ago that America leads. We’re the indispensable nation. Mr. Putin seems to be challenging that leadership,” said Kroft.

“Let me ask you this question,” said the president. “When I came into office– Ukraine was governed by a corrupt ruler who was a stooge of Mr. Putin. Syria was Russia’s only ally in the region. And today, rather than being able to count on their support and maintain the base they had in Syria, which they’ve had for a long time. Mr. Putin now is devoting his own troops, his own military, just to barely hold together by a thread his sole ally.”

“He’s challenging your leadership, Mr. President.”

“Well Steve, I got to tell you, if you think that running your economy into the ground and having to send troops in, in order to prop up your only ally is leadership, then we’ve got a different definition of leadership,” Obama said.

Mr. President, almost everyone in the world has a different definition of leadership than the one you use. If leadership involves creating a humanitarian disaster, re-starting the Cold War, and giving Iraq over to Islamic extremists, then that’s the kind of leadership we don’t need.

Obama has been played for the fool that he is, and this situation in Syria is just the tip of the iceberg. Putin knows that an America under Obama’s rule will never challenge his military advances into the Middle East. The Russian president may be operating from a position of weakness, but that makes him all the more dangerous. Putin wants to bring back the strong, centralized Soviet Union he loved so dearly, and skyrocketing oil prices would go a long way towards making that goal a reality. With Iran joining forces with Putin, the two countries could bring pressure on Saudi Arabia to reduce production and send oil prices back to the stratosphere.

That’s the best case scenario. The worst case is that Putin actually has designs on a Middle Eastern takeover. And that’s not as far-fetched as it might seem. If there is no significant U.S. strategy to prevent this psycho from pursuing military invasion, we could be looking at world turmoil of an especially dangerous kind.