Obama's Stupid Propaganda Stuff

In the face of worsening violence, the people of Crimea -- where ethnic Russians are a substantial majority -- voted overwhelmingly to secede from Ukraine and rejoin Russia, an action supported by Russian troops who were based at Russia's historic naval base at Sevastopol in Crimea. Russia accepted Crimea's request but balked at a similar appeal from ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine.

Then, amid feverish anti-Russian propaganda in the U.S. and European news media, the Kiev authorities designated the ethnic Russian resistance in the east as "terrorists" and mounted a brutal "anti-terrorism operation" against the population with the regime's neo-Nazi and other extremist militias spearheading the attacks. [See Consortiumnews.com's "Seeing No Neo-Nazi Militias in Ukraine."]

It was in the face of this ethnic cleansing that Russia moved to assist the defense of the so-called Donbass region. Yet, now Obama places the blame for all the destruction and suffering in eastern Ukraine, where thousands have died, not on the U.S.-backed Ukrainian government and its thuggish militias but on Putin.

And, with no sense of irony, Obama suggests that it is the Russian media that is distorting the story, another favorite theme of the U.S. propaganda campaign on Ukraine pushed by both the Obama administration and the mainstream U.S. media.

There was an up-is-down quality to the way that Obama presented the Ukraine situation which is troubling in one of two ways -- either he believes his own propaganda or he is a conscious liar. There's also a third possibility, that he has completely lost his bearings and adopts one position one day and veers in the opposite direction the next depending on who last talked to him.

But whatever the case, Obama cannot expect Putin and the Russians to view his public comments and contradictory behavior in a favorable light -- and then agree to cooperate with Obama on other hotspots where U.S. interests are much more endangered.