The Crimean Cleanup Has Begun

No, not the cleanup of the Ukrainian armed forces, and the pushing of many non-Russians out of Crimea and back to Ukraine, so the Russians can justify their indefinite occupation of Crimea.

Rather, the cleanup of President Obama's reputation for weakness in the face of Vladimir Putin, as documented by Stacy McCain: The Media’s Ukraine Hocus-Pocus

How many times do you have to watch the same magic trick before you start getting wise to the fact that the rabbit was never in the hat to begin with? The media’s approach to any controversy or scandal involving President Obama begins with two basic premises:

Everything Obama does is right and good; and

Any critic who says otherwise is wrong and bad.

This has been the way with everything from the 2009 “stimulus” bill to ObamaCare to Benghazi to the IRS scandal, and now we’re seeing the same method applied to the Russia-Ukraine crisis.

Don’t listen to Obama’s Ukraine critics: he’snot ‘losing’ — and it’s not his fight– Michael Cohen, Guardian
No, American Weakness Didn’t EncouragePutin to Invade Ukraine– Peter Beinart, The Atlantic

Translation: “That thing you thought you saw did not actually happen.”
In the initial reaction to Putin’s Crimean invasion, everyone saw it as an obvious embarrassment to Obama. . .

Expect to see a lot more of these in the near future.

The point is not that Obama should invade the Crimea to free it from the Russian grip.  The point is that by showing insufficient  attention to the regions problems, and focusing solely on his domestic agenda, Obama made it far more probable that Putin would attempt such blatant aggression.