Claude Smadja: The year the West lost leadership

Business Standard ^ | Dec 25, 2013 | Claude Smadja

[Innovative]

All in all, 2013 has been a bad year for the Western world and it all boils down to one reason: a dismal failure of leadership.

The tarnished standing of Mr Obama at home has paralleled and compounded, in 2013, the decline of the US' ability to shape events abroad. The White House erred in its support for Mohamed Morsi in Egypt and sunk into quasi-irrelevance as Abdul-Fattah al-Sisi ignored the US president's call.

It was left to Vladimir Putin - of all people - to step in and engineer some semblance of face-saving for the head of the world's superpower.

[Innovative]

Leadership and lack of leadership make a huge difference. Obama made the US into an inconsequential country on the world stage and Putin is more than happy to fill the vacuum, as he is doing in Egypt and elsewhere.

[Forgotten Amendments]

Yeah, we could’ve LED the world into a war in Syria backing the most extreme Islamic radicals possible.

Instead of apologizing for getting fooled by those phony “freedom fighters”, McCain and this idiot prattle on about “leadership”. Just shut up.

Thank goodness the American people rose up and stopped this evil.

[353FMG]

“The White House erred in its support for Mohamed Morsi....”

.
The WH did not err — it was always its intent to support the muslim brotherhood but they gambled and lost.

[cunning_fish]

Isn’t Putin a part of the West? If not, what is him?

[Nuc 1.1]

Putin has more western values than president 0.