Political Quotes

“Mr. President, sometimes it takes a sudden, flagrant breach of international order to dispel a President's naivete about an adversary. The 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan had that effect on President Carter, and one can only hope that Russia's annexation of Crimea will have a similar impact on President Obama. Only recently the President was describing his Russian reset--those were his words--as a success. In other words, he was still calling the reset a success after Moscow had done the following things--and I think it is worth recalling the litany of things Vladimir Putin and Russia have done notwithstanding President Obama's hopeful intention to reset that relationship. Here is what Moscow has done: They brutalized domestic human rights activists. They tortured and murdered anticorruption whistleblower Sergei Magnitsky. They unleashed a barrage of anti-American propaganda. They threatened to target U.S. missile defense sites with offensive weapons. They vetoed numerous United Nations resolutions regarding Syria, where Bashar al-Assad has now killed roughly 150,000 civilians. They vetoed those resolutions. They also ignored U.S. demands to stop aiding Bashar al-Assad, period. It is well known and documented that Russia regularly sends weapons to Assad to use on his own people. Russia has denounced U.S. sanctions against Iran as undisguised blackmail.…”