Russia, Iran and China: Progressive Chickens Coming Home to Roost
by John D. O’Connor
The following is an article originally published on Townhall. Read it HERE.
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In the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Barack Obama’s radical pastor, Reverand Jeremiah Wright, declared that “America’s chickens are coming home to roost!” His broad charge was correct, but not because he implied U.S. aggression. To the contrary, American weakness, both as to terrorist groups like al Qaeda and terrorist regimes like Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, invited this attack, not American strength.
In the clear light of historical hindsight, the failure of France and England to challenge Hitler’s illegal occupation of the Rhineland in 1936, followed by the lamentable 1938 Munich Agreement of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, squandered Western civilization’s opportunity for early prevention of the loss of millions of lives.
Similarly, the provocative weakness of Barack Obama, later put on steroids by the far more incompetent Biden Administration, has strengthened and emboldened Russia, Iran, and China while weakening America and her allies, leading to our present tumult.
Let’s start with the low-hanging fruit of the American appeasement of Russia. Soon after taking office, President Obama, without any quid pro quo, removed U.S. missiles in the Czech Republic and Poland and trained on Russia. The Nobel Peace Prize-winning tyro believed this would lessen any provocation of Russia but increased it by removing a strong deterrent. Obama then sent Putin, again unilaterally, in 2010 correspondence promising not to deploy other missile sites in Europe. In 2012, he famously assured outgoing Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that, after the election, he would have “more flexibility” toward Russia. What message was Obama sending?
Meanwhile, Obama deliberately weakened Ukraine, apparently on the nonsensical theory that a strong Ukraine would provoke war. Having cajoled Ukraine as a Senator to surrender weapons, as President, he successfully forced Ukraine to give up massive caches of arms and ammunition, leaving the country without any substantial weaponry. He, of course, gave Ukraine vague assurances of American security in exchange.
Soon thereafter, Ukraine’s corrupt President, Viktor Yanukovych, was convinced by advisor Paul Manafort in 2013 to sign an EU Cooperation Agreement, a precursor to NATO membership. But Yanukovych wisely sought American/NATO financial aid to make up for his lost Russian benefits, asking for $15B from NATO governments led by America. Obama refused because Progressives didn’t like his corrupt, strong-man style, whereupon Yanukovych was driven from office when he reneged on the Agreement. Ukraine was quickly destabilized in the related Maidan Revolution. Then Obama refused to militarily support Ukraine when Putin immediately marched through Ukraine to take Crimea in 2014, sending a signal of passivity to Putin.
Putin made no further move on Ukraine during the Trump Administration; all the while, Progressive media bought the transparently silly canard of Trump-Putin collusion. Putin’s true view of Obama-Biden, in contrast with Trump, was revealed when he began massing troops on Ukraine’s border soon after Biden took office in 2021.
Now to Iran. Obama disregarded the promising 2009 Green Revolution in Iran after the obviously fraudulent election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, ordering off all CIA support of this promising disruption of our enemy. He also continually refused Israel’s entreaties to allow it to bomb Iran’s nascent nuclear operations, instead choosing diplomacy as if that would avoid war. Think Neville Chamberlain.
The Obama Administration, per the clueless John Kerry, engaged Russia as a mediator in its talks with Iran, enhancing Putin’s Middle East power. After initially seeking the dismantling of Iran’s nuclear program, Kerry’s weak team was worn down after two years and, desperate for any agreement, eventually agreed to allow a full industrial-grade nuclear operation within ten years, along with providing $1.7B in cash from America and relief from various weapons embargos. The advantage to America, Israel, and their allies? Go figure.
Throughout this period, Vice President Biden’s main approach to China was weak amid the pungent odor of familial corruption, well documented today. It should have been no surprise that, sensing American weakness, China, Iran, and Russia grew closer.
Unlike Obama, Trump authorized lethal weapons for Ukraine, only to be impeached for his brief delay in providing it, while seeking an investigation of Biden and his son’s corrupt Ukrainian clients, again proving wise in hindsight. But during Trump’s time, Russia did not threaten Ukraine, Iran’s proxies were quiet on Israel, and China did not overtly threaten Taiwan. But the media were sure not to credit the hated President. After all, Progressives claimed, Trump colluded with Russia, as documented by Russian agents such as suspected spy Igor Danchenko and Putin buddy, oligarch Oleg Deripaska, Christopher Steele’s longtime and main client.
Taking office in early 2021, Biden nixed the Keystone Pipeline, with a capacity of 800,000 barrels per day, and decreed limitations on oil leases and offshore drilling, while the U.S. was thereby forced to continue purchasing 600,000 barrels per day from Russia. In so doing, Russia and Iran were made wealthier, as oil prices shot up upon Biden’s supply constriction in a market with inelastic demand.
On September 11, 2021, by previously announced plan, thus fully informing our enemies, Biden precipitately and incompetently withdrew from Afghanistan, an appalling display of weakness, incompetence, and disloyalty to our allies, as horrific slaughters of Afghans loyal to the U.S. followed.
Biden then seemed to signal that he would allow a “minor incursion” by Russia into Ukraine as Russia massed troops on Ukraine’s border. When Russia did invade, Biden dithered when fulsome American support could have crushed Russia’s incompetent, traffic-jammed invasion. In fact, fearing Russia, Biden refused highly effective MIGs for Ukraine.
Meanwhile, Biden chose to restart the Iran nuclear talks, even though a now-wealthy Iran, thanks to Biden’s climate policies, was less motivated, swimming in cash with high oil prices. Biden again sought Russian help. Hapless Secretary of State Anthony Blinken removed our long-cultivated strategic ambiguity on Taiwan, endangering that important ally-in-fact.
Here is the broader point. These many years of Obama-Biden provocative weakness, unlike Neville Chamberlain’s Munich concessions, have not been chronicled by our lapdog media, loyally in the Progressive tank, while the same media were aggressively dismissing any forward-leaning strategies of the despised Donald Trump.
These same journalists are now awakening to stomach-churching slaughters in Israel, after over a year of carnage in Ukraine.
So, here are some questions to be posed to the extremely arrogant East Coast media, which have nothing but contempt for the plain-spoken common sense of flyover country. Do you have enough critical intelligence and intellectual courage to identify the root causes of the slaughters we witness daily? Can you at least open up for discussion and debate that Progressive policies, both foreign and domestic, just maybe, are causing economic pain at home and murder abroad?
In the past, Western society invariably recognized its existential threats, albeit often belatedly and soft-headedly. That said, through an engaged media, our Western societies eventually recognized them before it was too late, albeit at great cost for that delay, as in World War II. But with today’s smug, unquestioning media reflecting centrally controlled, arrogant Progressive thinking, we may never wake up to our fundamental mistakes.
If so, America’s chickens will most certainly come home to roost, but this time, we fear, permanently so.
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John D. O’Connor is a former federal prosecutor and the San Francisco attorney who represented W. Mark Felt during his revelation as Deep Throat in 2005. O’Connor is the author of the books, Postgate: How the Washington Post Betrayed Deep Throat, Covered Up Watergate and Began Today’s Partisan Advocacy Journalism and The Mysteries of Watergate: What Really Happened.