Stand up to Putin

We’ve been had. Our president has surrendered all leverage in the Syrian conflict to Russia, whose president has offered a convenient proposition that will simultaneously extract our president from his responsibilities and place us in the clutches of the liar and brute Vladimir Putin.

It is either this administration’s profound incompetence or malicious desire to diminish our country on the international stage that has brought us to this point: America as second fiddle. America in the grandstands. America as bit part.

Are we going to capitulate and grovel at the feet of a man who threatens and detains journalists and political opponents? Are we to trust a man who recently stole the Super Bowl ring of Robert Kraft (owner of the New England Patriots) claiming, “I could kill a man with this,” who then in a New York Times op-ed piece published Wednesday declared, “We must stop using the language of force and return to the path of civilized diplomatic and political sett lament”?

Putin is playing Obama, and America, for a fool, and it is high time our commander in chief pulls his head out of the sand, lest he chokes on it in the Syrian desert.

Connor Dinnison

Spokane