Obama Hatred

Jacob Heilbrunn - TPM


Every once in awhile--heck, make that at least once a week--Charles Krauthammer writes something about President Obama that sets a new record for outlandish commentary. The former speechwriter for Walter Mondale turned neocon has become convulsed, more than almost any other columnist, by Obama hatred. Today's Washington Post column announces that Obama, in seeking better ties with Russia, is, in essence, destroying American national security for decades to come. Obama, Krauthammer alleges, is on the verge of selling out ballistic missile defense.

But Krauthammer's argument rests on a number of unpersuasive assumptions. For one thing, he states that "we can reliably shoot down an intercontinental ballistic missile," while Russia cannot. Actually, we can't. The tests have been iffy at best and there's no sound reason to believe that America can "reliably" shoot down an incoming missile, as nice as that might be. Krauthammer also alleges that Mikhail Gorbachev tried to "swindle" Ronald Reagan out of a missile defense system during negotiations at Reykjavik in 1986.

He did? The man who unilaterally dismantled the Soviet empire was nothing more than a swindler? In reality, Gorbachev was proposing a deal--elimination of nuclear weapons in exchange for an American commitment to confine itself to laboratory testing of missile defense for a decade, which is basically what happened anyway, even though Reagan refused the deal. But there was nothing underhanded about the negotiations. A swindle implies deceit.

Krauthammer's real objective is to undermine any incipient detente in U.S.-Russia relations. According to him, Obama's pathetic eagerness for negotiations (as opposed to confrontation) about arms reductions forms the "perfect distraction from the major issue between the two countries: Vladimir Putin's unapologetic and relentless drive to restore Moscow's hegemony over the sovereign states that used to be Soviet satrapies." Well. Putin is intent on carving out a sphere of influence over Georgia, but that does not amount to a "relentless drive" to restore the entire Soviet empire. Anyway, Obama made it clear that he's not acceding to Putin's desire to bully Georgia.

Instead, Obama is trying to create a modicum of good relations between Russia and America that could lead to further cooperation on Iran and elsewhere. How come Krauthammer has nothing to say about Obama's success in getting Russian permission for overflight rights to supply American troops in Afghanistan? Isolating Russia, or treating it as an enemy, will turn it into one.