It is striking how Obama references past mistakes on Afghanistan and emphasizes the now-tired “reset”-button themes — striking because of what is left unsaid.

One, there seems little awareness that Putin’s increasing authoritarianism from 2002 onward (empowered by the increase in oil prices, and the harassment of pro-democracy advocates at home and abroad), not just George Bush’s strut and provocations, were mostly the reasons why a confident Russia now decides to be for whatever the U.S. is against.

By framing the relationship with the subtext of “let’s improve what Bush ruined,” we present an image of contriteness, while essentially affirming past Russian behavior as understandable. No need to add that no Russian ever shows remorse about anything, much less the souring of Russian-American relations, much, much less its own role in that estrangement.

When Obama says that things got worse in Afghanistan and that he now is trying to renew attention there and right things, fair enough. He deserves our support for his escalation. But at the same time, he is absolutely silent about the radical shift in Iraq, the once-”bad” war that is now far more encouraging than is its “good” counterpart in Afghanistan.

But someone, apparently to be forever unmentioned, did something right for Obama to inherit relative calm in Iraq, a democratic government that still survives and which is exposing the old shibboleth “we only empowered Iran by going into Iraq” to be a short-term truism at best; when, in fact, a multiparty, Shiite-majority democracy in Iraq that replaced Saddam is probably proving far more destablizing to nearby 8th-century clerics in Iran than are their own IEDs and bought terrorists in Iraq.

The theocracy has real problems when its own clerics begin questioning the recent fraudulent election and calling for more transparency, inasmuch as they see across their border a workable system with popular support in a way unknown for the last 30 years in their own country.