Well, that "truce" sure didn't last long, did it?:
Fearing that a call for a truce was a ruse, protesters tossed firebombs and advanced upon police lines Thursday in Ukraine's embattled capital. Government snipers shot back and the almost-medieval melee that ensued left at least seventy people dead and hundreds injured.
Video footage on Ukrainian television showed shocking scenes Thursday of protesters being cut down by gunfire, lying on the pavement as comrades rushed to their aid. Trying to protect themselves with shields, teams of protesters carried bodies away on sheets of plastic or on planks of wood.
Of course, the call for a truce was a ruse. The recent roiling violence and chaos has been a huge PR blunder for "President" Yanukovych and significantly weakened his position. This was exacerbated by his claim this morning that his police forces were not armed and "all measures to stop bloodshed and confrontation are being taken," which was contradicted by his Interior Ministry when it announced that law enforcers would get weapons as part of an "anti-terrorist" operation.
Yanukovych desperately needs to buy time, and the truce was intended to procure it for him. Even without the propaganda FUBARs, it was a dubious prospect; with them, there's no chance at all. The situation is spiraling toward a civil war between the pro-NATO/EU western half of Ukraine and the pro-Russian eastern half. And if Yanukovych can't put a lid on it - which is to say, crush the western uprising - then his boss, Czar Vladimir, will be happy to do it for him with Russian "peace-keeping" troops.
Aside from that last factor, I cannot help but see the Ukrainian turmoil as a sneak-preview of what America will look like in early 2017.
Speaking of which, JASmius echo syndrome strikes yet again:
Meanwhile, in Washington the Obama administration condemned the bloodshed as conservatives in the House and Senate mocked what they saw as more empty threats from the president. Many likened it to the "red line" President Obama threatened Syria with last year over the use of poison gas, only to retreat after several gas attacks killed hundreds of people....
Conservative Washington Post columnist George Will picked up on the parallel between Ukraine and Syria during an appearance on Wednesday's "Special Report" on Fox News, Breitbart reported.
Except it really isn't an Obama "failure" of leadership, but rather the epitome of it. Remember the Obama Doctrine: to diminish American economic and military power, to terminate our superpower status, and reduce us to "just another country". To "transform" the U.S. into a gigantic Luxembourg, and then, presumably, start parceling off the "excess" to whence each came, like Dr. Arliss Loveless in Wild Wild West.
"Well, announcing expectations is all very well," Will said. "But I'm not sure who is impressed by it. What we are seeing in the Ukraine, what we've seen in Syria, and what we will see again in Iran is a complete failure of what I think was the centerpiece of the president's foreign policy, and that is the reset of the relations with Russia."
Peter Wehner asked in Commentary: "Have more empty words ever been uttered by an American president?"
Wehner, who served as deputy assistant to president George W. Bush wrote, "In the aftermath of Mr. Obama telling the Syrian regime that using chemical weapons would cross a 'red line,' and then doing nothing serious in response to it, the president's latest threat is probably evoking belly laughs in Kiev."
Also Wednesday, on Fox News' "Hannity" program, Oliver North described Obama as behaving like "Jimmy Carter on steroids."
North said he was not advocating sending American soldiers to quell civil wars abroad. "But it would have been nice to have had the credibility of being at least respected by adversaries or admired by our allies. And we have neither as a consequence of his total failure of leadership."
That's why O keeps speaking loudly without a stick. He's already emasculated American military power; now he's busily divesting us of any remaining vestiges of national prestige and self-respect. Indeed, I can't imagine that his impotent bloviating will have any affect on "President" Yanukovych other than to provoke the same kind of hysterical laughter than has had his patron in the Kremlin doubled over for the past five years. And that will inevitably produce results that are no laughing matter for whatever remains of the "free world" of which the U.S. is no longer a part.
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