The Frog King And Other Fairy Tales

Here's an actual photo of a recent NASA launch.  If you look at the top left corner,you will see a helpless frog flying through the air, blasted off of it's lily pad by the force of the launch.  It's a pretty good metaphor for the magnitude of the mismatch we have just witnessed between Mr. Obama and Mr. Putin.

Hey!  Red Line!....uh, no.  Wait.  Umm...aaaarrgh...

In 2008 we made an astonishing mistake.  We sent Mr. Obama to go head to head with other nations to represent our interests.  That mistake has proven to be a disaster, here at home, and on the international front.  As with our economy and the entire domestic front, we are seeing the consequences of our naiveté on the international stage.

Mr. Putin would be well advised to remember, however, that the position in which he finds himself is not due to his own skill at gamesmanship.  It all says far more about Mr. Obama than it does about Mr. Putin's abilities.  

The poor frog in the picture deserves our pity.  He was only trying to  survive in his little corner of the swamp.   He never understood the magnitude of the threat posed by an Atlas rocket.

Mr. Obama, to use that metaphor, actually believed that he could not only take over the entire swamp,  but simply by making some speeches, change it into some kind of leftist utopian paradise.  He believed that America needed to atone for it's actions in the world, and that bowing obsequiously to world leaders and handing out reset buttons would fix everything.  What he and the people who voted for him chose to ignore was simply what the rest of us call reality.  He still believes all this, having learned nothing in the last 5 years.  Like the Frog King, he may one day finally understand that he would have served himself better if he had grasped the difference between wishful thinking and reality. 

Something neither Putin nor Obama seem to understand is that America is indeed exceptional.  Yes, we have stepped in a pile of leftist PC doodoo, but we did it ourselves, which only proves that we're a nation of mortals.  We are dealing with a self inflicted wound, but it does not define us.  

Mr. Putin's hubris has led him to confuse Mr. Obama's worth with that of the United States. In that, he has made a serious mistake for which Russia will pay dearly in the future.  We are not frogs, Mr. Putin, and you are not an Atlas rocket.