Evil Umpire

I just heard a US Senator defending President Obama's deal with Russia to have Putin become the Evil Umpire entrusted to remove chemical weapons from Syria. She had the nerve to quote President Reagan's advice about deals with the Soviets that we should "trust but verify" and should do the same about Syria.

With all due respect to the good senator, she is confused. President Reagan never took his eye off the ball of defeating the Soviet Union and did not get distraced by the prospect of removing nuclear, biological, and chemical arms from Soviet control. He knew what the real threat was. The Evil Empire was real.

So don't defend being distracted from the goal of defeating Assad by the prospect of beginning a Putin-planned road trip that might temporarily deprive Assad of chemical weapons, but will surely buy the Assad regime time to survive.

And thank goodness today we have a weakened Russia with nuclear arms rather than a Soviet Union still occupying Eastern Europe with a large military but without nuclear weapons (and we wouldn't have nukes if the no-nukes crowd had their way). Keep our eye on the ball.