Yesterday, President Obama declared that because of his serious differences with Israeli prime minister Bibi Netanyahu, “this can’t be reduced to a matter of somehow let’s all hold hands and sing ‘Kumbaya.’”
Today, we learn the U.S. military will expand its air-strike campaign into the city of Tikrit in order to assist Iranian military forces in the country fighting ISIS.
Under President Obama’s unilateral decisions in foreign policy, the United States is closer than we have ever been to Iran, and more estranged than ever from Israel.
As noted in today’s Jolt, we treat our enemies better than we treat our friends:
Russia’s Making Nuclear Threats, and Obama’s Too Busy for NATO
Remember yesterday’s Jolt, featuring a chilling, unnervingly plausible scenario of Russia occupying Sweden’s Gotland Island and annexing the Baltic states?
Swedish military identified and followed four Russian fighter plane near Gotland and Bornholm, off the country’s east coast on Tuesday morning.
The planes were spotted in international airspace but heading towards Sweden at around 5.30am.
None of the aircraft — two TU-22M planes and two SU-27 fighter jets — were using transponders, the telecommunications devices that emit and gather signals from planes.
“It is the first time in years that we have seen precisely this type of aircraft over the Baltic Sea,” Anders Grenstad, Deputy Director of Operations for the Swedish Armed Forces told the TT news agency.
He said the planes were understood to have first flown over the Baltic coast, then turned south toward Bornholm and Gotland before heading back to the Finnish Gulf.
And the Russian saber-rattling is getting louder:
Recent statements by Russian ambassador Mikhail Vanin that Danish warships could become the target of Russian nukes, should the country participate in NATO’s missile defence, have drawn a sharp reaction from NATO.
“Denmark is a staunch NATO ally and NATO will defend all allies against any threat,” NATO spokesperson Oana Lungescu told BT. “We have made it clear that NATO’s missile defence is not directed against Russia or other countries, but is intended as defence against missile threats.”
Good thing that President Obama is — eh, you can see the punchline coming a mile away. Obama’s blowing off NATO’s leadership at a really, really bad moment:
President Barack Obama has yet to meet with the new head of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and won’t see Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg this week, even though he is in Washington for three days. Stoltenberg’s office requested a meeting with Obama well in advance of the visit, but never heard anything from the White House, two sources close to the NATO chief told me.
The leaders of almost all the other 28 NATO member countries have made time for Stoltenberg since he took over the world’s largest military alliance in October.
“It is hard for me to believe that the president of the United States has not found the time to meet with the current secretary general of NATO given the magnitude of what this implies, and the responsibilities of his office,” said [Kurt Volker, who served as the U.S. permanent representative to NATO under both President George W. Bush and Obama].
The world is upside down. We’re snubbing NATO, excusing Iran’s Supreme Leader’s declaring “Death to America,” and threatening to not support Israel at the United Nations. We’ve seen Libya, Yemen, and large chunks of Syria and Iraq collapse into anarchy or fall under control of the Islamic State or bloodthirsty Islamist groups.
Meanwhile, in Afghanistan . . .
While the Afghan government was roiled by months of controversy over last year’s presidential election, the Taliban was growing stronger. According to the United Nations, more than 10,000 civilians died in last year’s fighting, a record, while U.S. officials described Afghan military losses as unsustainable.
The bad guys are calling the shots.