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Putin has always been a bare-knuckles political brawler with a penchant for saying politically incorrect things about enemies — he once said of Islamist terrorists in Chechnya, for example, \u201cIf you are willing to become a radical Islamist and be circumcised, I invite you to Moscow. I will recommend that they perform the operation so that nothing can sprout there again.\u201d Now, however, he\u2019s directly challenging the authority of the United States \u2013 and he\u2019s winning. President Obama has always wanted to be perceived as a global leader. Instead, it\u2019s his chief international rival, quasi-dictator Putin, who has seized the reins.<\/p>\n
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Obama has been left to complain. \u201cDo I hold out hope that Mr. Putin may change his position on some of these issues?\u201d Obama asked in Sweden on Wednesday. \u201cI\u2019m always hopeful, and I will continue to engage him.\u201d Just a few weeks ago, Obama mocked Putin\u2019s posture during their meetings, likening it to a \u201cbored kid in the back of the classroom.\u201d<\/p>\n
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But it is Obama being schooled. Putin has stated that he would be open to action against Syria if shown proof that Assad ordered the chemical attack there. But on Wednesday, he said of John Kerry, \u201cOf course he lied. And that\u2019s not pretty.\u201d<\/p>\n
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The G20 summit has been set not around national security issues, but on tax issues and economic recovery. Nonetheless, it will be Putin setting the agenda on his home turf, especially given that the visiting team is led by a floundering quarterback.<\/p>\n
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Ben Shapiro is Editor-At-Large of Breitbart News and author of the New York Times bestseller \u201c<\/em>Bullies: How the Left\u2019s Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences America<\/em>\u201d\u00a0(Threshold Editions, January 8, 2013).<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Global Leadership Reset: On Eve of G20, by Ben Shapiro 4 Sep 2013 1256 post a comment Just before Russian President Vladimir Putin opened the G20 summit in St. Petersburg, he blasted the Obama administration on Wednesday for what he termed its propaganda on military action against Syria. \u201cWe talk with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":31641,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[145],"class_list":["post-76452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-usa","tag-barack-obama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76452"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76452\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31641"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}