The Ukraine Crisis Says More About Sarah Palin Than You May Think

By Fred Fleitz

I was pleased when Tom Anderson asked me to write for his Alaska Politics and Elections blog. I’m an East Coast guy, but Tom and I have become long distance friends because of interviews I’ve been doing for his radio show. I worked in several national security jobs with the U.S. government, including as a CIA analyst and Chief of Staff to John Bolton. Tom calls me once in a while to tap my expertise to discuss global security issues for his Alaska audience.

Sarah Palin has made a significant impression on the rest of the country for Alaska, more than many Alaskans may realize. It is a tragedy the way the mainstream media and late night comics have ridiculed her. This reflects the double standard that the liberal elite has for conservatives in America politics, especially women and minorities. Sarah’s distinctive heartland accent, her strong conservative views, and her hard-hitting rhetoric have been too much for the left to take.

And please don’t tell me Palin came off as not being bright because she misspoke a few times during the 2008 campaign. Like most people speaking off the cuff doing cable TV and radio interviews, I’ve made lots of verbal mistakes.

And why does Joe Biden get a pass from the press for his constant misstatements? Remember when Biden said in 2006, “You cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent.” Would the media let any Republican politician get away with saying such a thing?

Palin said during the 2008 presidential campaign that it was possible to see Russia from an Alaskan island, a true statement. After Tina Fey said while impersonating Palin on Saturday Night Live, “And I can see Russia from my house,” pundits and the news repeatedly mocked Palin for Fey’s line. On the other hand, Barack Obama said there were 57 states when he was a presidential candidate but the media has ignored this and every other Obama misstatement.

Some in the mainstream media tried to undermine Palin’s credibility by pointing out that she attended several colleges to earn a bachelor’s degree in journalism and did not go to an elite college. But for top Republican women, the left really doesn’t care how well educated they are. The sexist grilling the media gave the late Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick – a former Georgetown professor –was much worse than what Palin has been put through. For example, feminist Naomi Wolf once said Kirkpatrick was “a woman without a uterus” because she was a Cold War hawk. Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice – a Stanford University professor—was prevented from being the Rutgers University commencement speaker this year by the Rutgers faculty and has been called an “Uncle Tom” by black liberal activists. Harry Belafonte once called Rice a “house slave.”

What did civil and women’s rights groups do to defend Kirkpatrick, Palin, and Rice from such attacks? Nothing.

That brings me to Sarah Palin’s prescient statement concerning the Russian invasion of Georgia when she was the Republican Vice Presidential candidate in 2008. Palin said:

“After the Russian Army invaded the nation of Georgia, Senator Obama’s reaction was one of indecision and moral equivalence, the kind of response that would only encourage Russia’s Putin to invade Ukraine next.”

This was a truly inspiring prediction. If a similar prediction concerning a Republican president had been made by liberal foreign policy experts like Madeleine Albright, Joseph Nye, or Jane Harman, there would have been dozens of press stories over the last few weeks applauding them for their brilliance and foresight. The few recent media comments about Palin’s 2008 statement have been negative and sneering.

Palin’s prediction would have been controversial even if John McCain had made it because it went against the foreign policy establishment’s historic tendency to downplay threats from Moscow and criticized Obama. Mitt Romney encountered this during a 2012 presidential debate with President Obama when he identified Russia as a major U.S. geopolitical foe. Obama mocked Romney for this remark by flippantly saying “the 1980’s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back.”

The news media and foreign policy experts were much harder on Palin in 2008 for her statement about Georgia and Ukraine and portrayed it as another sign of her stupidity. Foreign Policy magazine called Palin’s statement “strange” and “an extremely far-fetched scenario.”

In a March 3 blog post, Foreign Policy “sort of” admitted Palin was right and it was wrong about the Georgia invasion and that it could be followed by a Russian invasion of Ukraine. However, the magazine caveated this by criticizing Palin for not having a background in foreign policy.

Other experts tried to dismiss Palin’s claim in a February 28 Facebook post that she predicted Putin may invade Ukraine if Obama was elected president as only “half true” because they said she only raised this as a possibility and stressed her allegedly weak foreign policy credentials.

But let’s face it, if Dr. Kirkpatrick or Dr. Rice had made Palin’s prediction in 2008, the foreign policy establishment and the mainstream media would have slammed them too. Sarah Palin’s foreign policy background had nothing to do with criticisms of her prediction. It was all about her being a conservative woman.

Meanwhile, the mainstream media has said almost nothing throughout the Obama presidency about the stunning foreign policy incompetence of Mr Obama and his national security team. This includes:

• Consistently misjudging and underestimating Russia as a U.S. adversary, not to mention every other U.S. adversary.

• The president’s naive approach to the Arab Spring and his 2009 “apology tour” speeches in Istanbul and Cairo.

• Laying down red lines and ultimatums to U.S. adversaries but failing to back them up.

• Janet Napolitano, Mr. Obama’s first Homeland Security, trying to remove the word “terrorism” from the U.S. government lexicon and replace it with the nonsensical term “man-caused disasters.”

• Treating Islamist terrorism as a law enforcement matter and reading Miranda rights to terrorist suspects, even some captured on the battlefield.

• Trying to move dangerous al Qaeda inmates from the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba prison facility to prisons in Michigan and Illinois and proposing to try some of these prisoners in New York City.

It’s worth noting that Mr. Obama supported these and many other ill-advised foreign policy initiatives during his presidency despite the fact that he served on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

The abysmal foreign policy record of President Obama is making Sarah Palin look pretty good. She has shown common sense on national security matters and hasn’t been afraid to buck the establishment. If she had been elected vice president, Palin would have received daily intelligence briefings and the assistance of national security advisers. Like most newly elected to the branch and Congress, Palin would have quickly filled any alleged gap in her foreign policy background.

Harvard Law-educated President Obama had slightly more foreign policy experience than Sarah Palin did in 2008 from his four years in the Senate. However, he lacks her common sense and has surrounded himself with a weak national security team.

Now more than ever we need elected officials with common sense who know how to govern. Sarah Palin’s 2008 prediction about Georgia and Ukraine is another indication of the kind of competent government we missed out on with the election of Barack Obama and Joe Biden. The bashing of Palin reflects the determination of the liberal elite to prevent outsiders – especially those who challenge liberal foreign policy assumptions – from assuming higher office. Hopefully, the disastrous domestic and foreign policies of the Obama years will cause Americans realize this and elect outsiders like Palin who will challenge the mainstream media and the foreign policy establishment in the future.

Fred Fleitz, a former CIA analyst, is a Senior Fellow with the Center for Security Policy and Chief Analyst with LIGNET.com.