When speaking to reporters at the recent global conference in Paris on climate change, president Obama responded to a reporter’s question about Russian involvement in Syria with the following statement.
The Russians now have been there for several weeks, over a month. And I think fair-minded reporters who have looked at the situation would say that the situation hasn’t changed significantly.
In the interim, Russia’s lost a commercial passenger jet. You’ve seen another jet shot down. There have been losses in terms of Russian personnel. And I think Mr. Putin understands that with Afghanistan fresh in the memory for him to simply get bogged down in an inconclusive and paralyzing civil conflict, is not the outcome that he’s looking for.
It is incredible that Obama is snidely chiding Russia for not achieving its military goals in Syria in one month when the US has been bogged down in Afghanistan for 14 years, in Iraq for 12 years, and is now involved in Syria, Yemen, Somalia and other countries in the region for many years with no end in sight.
Russia had a disastrous experience in Afghanistan and may be treading dangerously close to another fiasco with their increasing involvement in Syria. But for Obama of all people to taunt him for his inability to ‘win’ their goals in four weeks in ludicrous.
Yeah, that’s some world-class projection right there.
Obama’s legacy is going to be “well, I didn’t start those wars….” as if continuing them through his entire administration (after promising to withdraw) is somehow not relevant.
Well, the last sentence of the remarks made perfect sense. The most charitable interpretation of the rest of it would be “OK, you’ve done plenty of damage, now it’s time to declare victory and head home like we always do.”