Thread:Comments:U.S. responds to Russian election hacking with expulsions, sanctions/Let's see/reply

I don't think this is primarily about Syria, nor about foreign policy, and I also don't think it's desperation. If the Russian government deliberately tries to undermine US democracy then, regardless of which direction they try to tip things, what the US does in response to that is about US domestic integrity, not US foreign policy &mdash; it's about Russia involving itself inside the US, and US involvement or non-involvement overseas is irrelevant to it. (The idea that no such response would be forthcoming if Russia had tried to tip the scales the other way is bullshit, i.e., stuff said without caring how or whether it corresponds to reality; if Russia had tried to tip the scales the other way then either Obama would have responded the same way or he wouldn't, I have a guess as to which, perhaps some people would have a different guess, and there would be a question to discuss about whether the Obama response to that was right or wrong &mdash; but neither of those things happened because Russia did what it did rather than doing something else, and what would or wouldn't have happened in that alternative scenario, and what would have been right or wrong to do in that scenario, is irrelevant to what is the right thing to do in reality.) Obama clearly isn't responsible for what Trump chooses to do or not do after Obama is no longer POTUS, but Obama clearly is responsible for doing what he believes to be right while he is POTUS. And by doing what he believes to be right atm, Obama maximizes Trump's flexibility to choose what direction to go in (including both continuing Obama's policy and completely reversing it, as well as anything between).

The Russian action seems likely to have been two-pronged in concept: get dirt on both major US parties, use the dirt on one party to undermine it so it loses, and use the dirt on the other party to manipulate what it does once it wins.