CRIMEAN VOTE, THE EXCITING AFTERMATH – AT 8:58 A.M. ET:  Now comes the moment of truth for one Barack Hussein Obama Jr.  Crimea has voted to secede from Ukraine and join Russia as part of Vladimir Putin's dream of a new Russian empire.  Here stands Obama, a failed, weak, American president.  Can he get into the real world...for the first time?  David Sanger in The New York Times sets the scene:

WASHINGTON — For five years, President Obama has consciously recast how America engages with the world’s toughest customers. But with Russia poised to annex Crimea after Sunday’s referendum, with a mounting threat to the rest of Ukraine and with the carnage in Syria accelerating, Mr. Obama’s strategy is now under greater stress than at any time in his presidency.

In his first term, the White House described its approach as the “light footprint”: “Dumb wars” of occupation — how Mr. Obama once termed Iraq — were out. Drone strikes, cyberattacks and Special Operations raids that made use of America’s technological superiority were the new, quick-and-dirty expression of military and covert power. When he did agree to have American forces join the bombing of Libya in 2011, Mr. Obama insisted that NATO and Arab states “put skin in the game,” a phrase he vastly prefers to “leading from behind.”

As he learned to play the long game, the Treasury Department became Mr. Obama’s favorite noncombatant command. It refined the art of the economic squeeze on Iran, eventually forcing the mullahs to the negotiating table.

But so far those tools — or even the threat of them — have proved frustratingly ineffective in the most recent crises. Sanctions and modest help to the Syrian rebels have failed to halt the slaughter; if anything, the killing worsened as negotiations dragged on.

The White House was taken by surprise by Vladimir V. Putin’s decisions to invade Crimea, but also by China’s increasingly assertive declaration of exclusive rights to airspace and barren islands. Neither the economic pressure nor the cyberattacks that forced Iran to reconsider its approach have prevented North Korea’s stealthy revitalization of its nuclear and missile programs.

In short, America’s adversaries are testing the limits of America’s post-Iraq, post-Afghanistan moment.

And this, in the same piece, quoting Condi Rice:

“There was a view that if the United States pulled back and stopped ‘imposing’ and ‘insisting’ in the world, the vacuum would be filled by good things: the international community and the allies,” Ms. Rice said in a recent phone conversation from Stanford University, where she teaches. “But what has filled that space has been brutal dictators; extremist forces, especially in Iraq and Syria; and nationalism.”

COMMENT:  Sanger is being too kind, but it's a reasonable analysis.  We started losing the minute Obama came into office.  His first steps were to snub America's allies, sending a dangerous signal to the world.  He famously sent back to Britain a bust of Winston Churchill that had rested in the Oval Office, an insult to a man who symbolizes resistance to aggression; he canceled the anti-missile systems promised to Poland the Czech Republic, raising questions as to whether America could be trusted; he and his personal Tonto, Hillary Clinton, regularly chastised Israel; he ignored North Korea's nuclear progress. 

We are in trouble.  Does Obama understand?  We await his next move.  He has never shown much modesty, or a willingness to listen to wiser heads.  If he will not change, our national troubles will increase.

March 17,  2014