Obama to Putin: We’ll just see if I have a summit with you, Snowden protector!

One of the things I loved, and liberals hated, about George W. Bush was something Bush declared about himself: "I don't bluff."

And he didn't. When he told Saddam Hussein he had to do certain things or face an invasion, he meant it. When he told the Taliban they had to turn over their "guests" or receive a visit from the U.S. Armed Forces, he meant it. This was the sort of thing that drove left-wingers and isolationists to decry his go-it-alone cowboy whatever, but anyone who was inclined to poke a finger in America's eye understood that when Bush declared what the consequences would be, Bush meant what he said. Do you think Vladimir Putin is worried about Barack Obama's threat to cancel their upcoming summit because Putin decided to give at least temporary asylum to Edward Snowden? Me neither.

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President Barack Obama may retaliate for Moscow’s decision to give NSA leaker Edward Snowden temporary asylum by canceling a planned summit early next month with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the White House warned Thursday. Press secretary Jay Carney told reporters that the U.S. had no advance notice of Russia’s decision and that the president is “extremely disappointed.” "He's not a dissident. He’s not a whistle-blower. He’s been charged with a crime,” the spokesman said of Snowden, stressing that Washington would keep pushing Moscow over the issue. Obama had been scheduled to attend a Group of 20 countries summit in St. Petersburg, Russia, Sept. 5-6 and hold a one-on-one meeting with Putin in Moscow beforehand. But Carney said that plan was now at risk. “We are evaluating the utility of a summit in light of this and other issues, but I have no announcement today on that,” Carney said. “Our relationship with Russia, as is the case with other important countries around the world, is based in realism.”

There's your wiggle room, by the way. Hey, there's other issues! It's not just Snowden. If Obama does decide to skip it, he's giving himself room to claim it's not only, or even primarily, about Snowden. You know, there are a lot of other issues, he's busy trying to eat his waffles . . . it's just not a good time. I'm not so sure it would break Putin's heart to get out of meeting with Obama, but it might be in Putin's interest to see the meeting happen. Obama seems determined to relive the nuclear freeze movement of his youth, when community organizers everywhere demanded that Ronald Reagan negotiate with the Soviets a complete halt of nuclear weapon production, and failing that, to disarm unilaterally. Taking their advice would almost certainly have cost us the victory we won in the Cold War, but for some reason Obama still thinks an arms treaty with the Russians should be a U.S. priority. Apparently we haven't gone far enough by ceding to Putin's wishes and cancelling missile defense systems Bush had promised our allies we would deploy. Now we have to go into negotiations to get rid of our own offensive weapons, on the promise that Putin will do the same. Do you really think Obama will carry out his threat not to show up serve up more concessions to Putin, now that he's won re-election and he can be flexible? And if he doesn't, how much more feckless does he look having threatened to cancel? Then again, he can look any more feckless than he already does?