Obama also surely knows that Yanukovych's ouster violated both Ukraine's constitution and principles of democracy, but he pretends otherwise. And, he knows that Crimea's secession reflected the will of the people, but he must insist that their vote was illegitimate.
At a March 25 news conference in the Netherlands, Obama toed the line of the hypocritical false narrative. He declared, "we have said consistently throughout this process is that it is up to the Ukrainian people to make their own decisions about how they organize themselves and who they interact with." He then added that the Crimean referendum was "sloppily organized over the course of two weeks" and thus a sham.
If Obama were telling the truth, he would have noted that Yanukovych -- for all his faults -- was democratically elected in a process that was deemed fair by international observers. Obama would have acknowledged that Yanukovych agreed on Feb. 21 to a process that would have allowed for an orderly and legal process for his replacement.
Obama would have admitted, too, that the violent coup and the actions of the rump parliament in Kiev were both illegal and, indeed, "sloppily organized" -- and that the U.S. government acted hastily in recognizing this coup regime. But double standards seem to be the only standards these days in Official Washington.
What is perhaps tragic about Obama is that he does know better. He is not a stupid man. But he doesn't dare go against the grain for fear of being denounced as "naïve" about Putin or "weak" in not facing down "Russian aggression." So, he reads the lines that have been, in effect, dictated by neocons within his own administration.
I'm told that Obama, like Putin, was caught off-guard by the Ukraine crisis. But Obama's unwillingness or inability to recast the false narrative left him with no political choice but to join in the Putin-bashing. That, in turn, means that Putin won't be there to help Obama navigate around future U.S. war plans that the neocons have in mind for Syria and Iran.
Indeed, neutralizing the Obama-Putin relationship may have been the chief reason why the neocons were so eager to stoke the Ukrainian fires -- and it shows how false narratives can get people killed.
[For more of Consortiumnews.com's exclusive coverage of the Ukraine crisis, see "Why Europe Shies from Ukraine Showdown"; "WPost's Anti-Putin Group Think"; "Neocons' Ukraine-Syria-Iran Gambit"; "Mainstream US Media is Lost in Ukraine"; "Corporate Interests Behind Ukraine Putsch"; "Can Obama Speak Strongly for Peace?"; "Neocons Have Weathered the Storm"; "Crimea's Case for Leaving Ukraine"; "The 'We-Hate-Putin' Group Think"; "Putin or Kerry: Who's Delusional?"; "America's Staggering Hypocrisy"; "What Neocons Want from Ukraine Crisis"; "Ukraine: One 'Regime Change' Too Many?"; "A Shadow US Foreign Policy"; "Cheering a 'Democratic' Coup in Ukraine"; "Neocons and the Ukraine Coup."](Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
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