Obama finally gets tough with Russia

Despite sloppy reporting that repeatedly said otherwise, often accompanied by Page 1 headlines, Donald Trump never called for Russia to hack Hillary Clinton’s emails. He specifically said any hacking would not have occurred if the Obama administration had not been so weak, implying that a Trump administration would have been strong and would have prevented it.

He had a point. President Barack Obama has been wimpy on hacking and other misdeeds by Russians, and they have kept coming at us until finally they went a step too far for him. They are said to have hacked emails of the Clinton campaign headquarters and arranged their public release, apparently to discredit her as she ran for president, hardly a move citizens should cheer.

So with justification possibly accompanied by political purpose, Obama has combined fist-waving rhetoric with sanctions. But where was his fury in 2014 when the Russians hacked his own White House emails, not the classified items in special servers, but still sensitive material that Obama and staffers were sending around about daily activities?

Why didn’t we see more fiery-eyed pluck when the Russians were hacking State Department emails and technological and other information all over the county? This was all major stuff with possibly major military, economic and other consequences, but some say, we also spy and didn’t want to go too far. Still where was the necessary toughness when Russia grabbed Crimea and otherwise messed with Ukraine or intervened in Syria?

To move beyond Russia, why did we have an all-talk-no-walk Syria policy that has left almost a half million dead and multimillions as refugees? Why did we do so little when the Chinese stole information on 20 million federal employees or began messing with the holdings of U.S. allies in the South China Sea?

If Obama had been tougher earlier, might we not have had the hacking of the Democrats and possibly an attempted hacking of Republicans who outsmarted them? Is the public learning so much about Clinton campaign underhandedness more important than all of the above? Do Obama’s lastminute actions have anything at all to do with delegitimizing the legacy-erasing election of Trump and complicating his moves after the inaugural?

I think they do, and I do not think WikiLeaks made much if any difference in the election. I obviously cannot prove that, however, and I do think Obama is on-target. The question now is what Trump will do.

Everyone points, first off, to his supposed approval of Russian hacking. What he said was that the press would be delighted if Russia did have Clinton’s deleted emails and shared them. He was not referring to the political hacking, but to material written when Clinton secretary of state and that she herself said concerned only such personal things as talk about yoga lessons and grandkids. If they concerned work-related matters, obstruction of justice would be an issue.

Trump has also praised Russian President Vladimir Putin, a murderous autocrat who is now striving for Russia to rise to threatening new heights. Trump will need to stand up to him, but there also could be areas where Russia’s national interests coincide with ours, such as eradicating the Islamic State. Just maybe, this deal-maker could make some wise bargains with Russia without naively trying for a “Russian reset,” as Obama and Clinton did.

It might also be recalled that the Clintons received millions of dollars for their foundation as Bill Clinton helped donating interests in a deal in which uranium resources went to Russia, including 20 percent of U.S. uranium. Russia rose to be the foremost world power in these nuclear materials and Bill Clinton also received a $500,000 check from a Kremlin-associated bank for a speech he gave.

All of that received less attention during the campaign than the misinformation about Trump calling for Russian hacking.