Special to WorldTribune.com

With a year and a half left in the Obama presidency, Vladimir Putin is taking his humiliation of the American leader to the next level, writes columnist Charles Krauthammer.

“Wouldn’t you take advantage of these last 16 months if you were Putin, facing a man living in a faculty-lounge fantasy world?” Krauthammer asks.

“Where was Obama when Putin began bombing Syria? Leading a U.N. meeting on countering violent extremism.”

Krauthammer opined that Obama “has, once again, been totally outmaneuvered by Vladimir Putin. At the United Nations, Obama had welcomed the return, in force, of the Russian military to the Middle East — for the first time in decades — in order to help fight the Islamic State.

“The ruse was transparent from the beginning. Russia is not in Syria to fight the Islamic State. The Kremlin was sending fighter planes, air-to-air missiles and SA-22 anti-aircraft batteries. Against an Islamic State that has no air force, no planes, no helicopters?”

Krauthammer added that Putin’s continuous eating of Obama’s lunch “makes you want to weep.”

“Consider: When Obama became president, the surge in Iraq had succeeded and the United States had emerged as the dominant regional actor, able to project power throughout the region. Last Sunday, Iraq announced the establishment of a joint intelligence-gathering center with Iran, Syria and Russia, symbolizing the new “Shiite-crescent” alliance stretching from Iran across the northern Middle East to the Mediterranean, under the umbrella of Russia, the rising regional hegemon.

“Russian planes roam free over Syria attacking Assad’s opposition as we stand by helpless. Meanwhile, the U.S. secretary of state beseeches the Russians to negotiate ‘de-conflict’ arrangements — so that we and they can each bomb our own targets safely. It has come to this.

“Why is Putin moving so quickly and so brazenly? Because he’s got only 16 more months to push on the open door that is Obama. He knows he’ll never again see an American president such as this — one who once told the General Assembly that ‘no one nation can or should try to dominate another nation’ and told it again Monday of ‘believing in my core that we, the nations of the world, cannot return to the old ways of conflict and coercion.’

“They cannot? Has he looked at the world around him — from Homs to Kunduz, from Sanaa to Donetsk — ablaze with conflict and coercion?”

  ‘it’s come to this’, Charles Krauthammer, Putin humiliates Obama’s America: From post-surge Iraq, WorldTribune.com