{"id":11136,"date":"2018-04-11T13:05:24","date_gmt":"2018-04-11T20:05:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=11136"},"modified":"2018-04-11T13:06:36","modified_gmt":"2018-04-11T20:06:36","slug":"five-catastrophic-decisions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/five-catastrophic-decisions\/","title":{"rendered":"Five Catastrophic Decisions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review<\/p>\n<p><em>1) The Obama administration\u2019s invitation to Vladimir Putin to come into Syria ostensibly to stop the use of weapons of mass destruction<\/em>. The latter did not happen, but after an over 40-year Russian hiatus in the Middle East, Putin has recalibrated the region, and Russia will be far harder to expel than it was to invite in. John Kerry did not get rid of WMD; he ensured that he got more of it.<\/p>\n<p>2)\u00a0<em>The Ben Rhodes\/John Kerry\/Barack Obama Iran Deal.<\/em>\u00a0It was a disaster precisely because a) it was unneeded, given the ongoing strangulation of the Iranian economy due to tardy but finally tough sanctions, and b) it was embedded within so many side deals and payoffs, mostly stealthy, that it became a caricature, from nocturnal hostage ransom payments that helped fuel terrorists to whole areas of the Iran nuclear project exempt from spot inspections.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/corner\/russia-trump-resistance-five-catastrophic-decisions\/?utm_source=Hoover+Daily+Report&amp;utm_campaign=626681f406-HDR&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_term=0_21b1edff3c-626681f406-73437989\">Read the full article here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review 1) The Obama administration\u2019s invitation to Vladimir Putin to come into Syria ostensibly to stop the use of weapons of mass destruction. The latter did not happen, but after an over 40-year Russian hiatus in the Middle East, Putin has recalibrated the region, and Russia will be far harder [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1169,1156,1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-2TC","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":6445,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/putin-puts-obama-in-hot-seat-what-will-you-do-if-rebels-are-ones-using-chemical-weapons\/","url_meta":{"origin":11136,"position":0},"title":"Putin Puts Obama in Hot Seat: &#8216;What Will You Do If Rebels Are Ones Using Chemical Weapons?&#8217;","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 4, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Raymond Ibrahim \/\/\u00a0RaymondIbrahim.com \u00a0 Russian President Vladimir Putin has a strange way of speaking straightforwardly, without all the artificial and \u201cmorally superior\u201d airs one expects from Western politicians. Earlier, for example, he\u00a0wondered why Western leaders were supporting\u00a0cannibals\u00a0in Syria: You will not deny that one does not really need to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Syria&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Syria","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/syria\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/efw_0-300x205.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":6440,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/a-bare-chested-machiavelli\/","url_meta":{"origin":11136,"position":1},"title":"A Bare-Chested Machiavelli","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 10, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0NRO's The Corner \u00a0 It is unfortunate that Vladimir Putin could not use his formidable diplomatic skills at home to address his own near failing state rather than showcasing them abroad at our expense. Oh, well . . . Without much effort, his Alice-in-Wonderland proposal of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Syria&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Syria","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/syria\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6525,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/syria-postmortem\/","url_meta":{"origin":11136,"position":2},"title":"Syria Postmortem","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 19, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0NRO's The Corner\u00a0 I think the so-called Syrian crisis is working out as most anticipated: 1) In about a year or so Assad and Putin will announce that they \u201cthink\u201d they might have in theory rounded up a lot of the WMD, and will soon make\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Syria&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Syria","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/syria\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7143,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/of-pre-and-postmodern-poseurs\/","url_meta":{"origin":11136,"position":3},"title":"Of Pre- and Postmodern Poseurs","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 24, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Obama's postmodernism has met its match in premodern Putin. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0PJ Media\u00a0 Vladimir Putin thinks he has a winning formula to restore the global clout of the old Soviet Union. Contemporary Russia is a chaotic, shrinking, and petrodollar-fed kleptocracy. It certainly lacks the population, the vast resources,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Russia&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Russia","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/europe\/russia\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9750,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/putin-obama-and-trump\/","url_meta":{"origin":11136,"position":4},"title":"Putin, Obama \u2014 and Trump","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 17, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson\/\/National Review Let\u2019s hope that the era of \u2018lead from behind\u2019 and violated red lines is over. For eight years, the Obama administration misjudged Vladimir Putin\u2019s Russia, as it misjudged most of the Middle East, China, and the rest of the world as well. Obama got wise\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Putin&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Putin","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/putin\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8716,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/dont-trust-putin-in-the-mideast\/","url_meta":{"origin":11136,"position":5},"title":"Don\u2019t Trust Putin in the Mideast","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 8, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson\u00a0\/\/ National Review Online Contrary to the principles of American foreign policy of the last 70 years, President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry tacitly invited Russia to \u201chelp\u201d monitor things in the Middle East. Now they are learning that there are lots of Middle\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Russia&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Russia","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/europe\/russia\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"(Mikhail Klimentiev\/Pressphotos\/Getty)","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/vladimir-putin-coalition-r-500x500.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11136"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11136"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11136\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11138,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11136\/revisions\/11138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}