Too Funny (In a Bleak, Scary Way): Lt. Col. Ralph Peters Compares Josh Earnest to Baghdad Bob

You may recall that Baghdad Bob was Saddam Husssein's mouthpiece, the spin-meister who, when the regime was going down the tubes in 2003, kept assuring Iraqis that everything was hunky-dory.

Of course, it wasn't, and BB's insistence that all was well despite every indication to the contrary made his doublespeak and bafflegab sound all the more hilarious to Western ears.

Fast forward to today, when Vladimir Putin continues to run rings around the gormless Obami (and it is clear that their guilelessness is no match for Putin's ruthlessness), and you have Josh Earnest insisting, Baghdad Bob-style, that Putin flexing his considerable muscle in Syria is a sign of--wait for it--the Russian's "weakness."

Furthermore, claims Earnest, the Russian strategy is bound to "backfire"--because that's how things played out for the U.S. in Iraq. Therefore, all the U.S. has to do is sit on its hands and wait for the inevitable to occur.

How is it possible for this administration, replete as it is with so many (alleged) brainiacs, to so completely misread the situation?

Easy. If you are accustomed to dwelling in the land of delusion, nothing short of, say, an Iranian A-bomb falling on the White House is likely to burst your bubble.

By coincidence, I happen to be reading (devouring, really) Niall Ferguson's new biography of Henry Kissinger. In the book's intro, Ferguson confesses that, despite having spent "a substantial proportion of the last twenty year trying to understand better the nature of power and the causes of war and peace," the ten years he spent researching Kissinger's life and times have led him to conclude that his previous approach to unpacking things

was unsubtle. In particular, I has missed the crucial importance in American foreign policy of the history deficit: the fact that key decision makers know almost nothing not just of other countries' pasts but also of their own. Worse, they often do not see what is wrong with their ignorance. Worst of all, they know just enough history to have confidence but not enough to have understanding. Like the officials who assured me in early 2003 that the future of a post-Saddam Iraq would closely resemble that of post-Communist Poland, too many highly accomplished Americans simply do not appreciate the value, but also the danger, of historical analogy.

Ignorance of history. Confidence but no understanding. Faulty analogizing.

He's describing the Obama White House (and its spokesmuppet Josh Earnest) to a T, don't you think?

Update: Reality check for baffled Obami--Russia is the new hegemon.