Second Palin prediction was bigger than Ukraine claim

The folks at Foreign Policy magazine didn’t take too kindly to Sarah Palin rubbing it in when she declared the other day that she was vindicated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine’s Crimea region.

She took to Facebook to deliver this rejoinder, nearly six years after she warned that Russian President Vladimir Putin may pounce on neighboring Ukraine:

"Yes, I could see this one from Alaska. I'm usually not one to Told-Ya-So, but I did, despite my accurate prediction being derided as ‘an extremely far-fetched scenario' by the ‘high-brow' Foreign Policy magazine," she wrote.

During the 2008 campaign, the Republican vice presidential candidate said this at a Reno, Nev., appearance: "After the Russian Army invaded the nation of Georgia, Sen. Obama's reaction was one of indecision and moral equivalence, the kind of response that would only encourage Russia's Putin to invade Ukraine next."   

Foreign Policy's Blake Hounshell called that hypothetical "an extremely far-fetched scenario" at the time, "given how Russia has been able to unsettle Ukraine's pro-Western government without firing a shot.” 

It’s important to note that Palin made her prediction at a time when Russia’s choice for Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovich, was firmly in control in Kiev.

Yanukovich gives Putin a wink

The events of 2014 in Ukraine are the result of bloody protests and Yanukovich fleeing the country, not the prevailing situation in 2008 leading to some kind of inevitability.

The Foreign Policy team also wonders why Republicans in 2014 would want to go back in time and portray Palin as a foreign policy soothsayer.

Hounshell wrote:

“… The (2008) McCain team assigned two Republican foreign policy operatives -- Randy Scheunemann and Steve Biegun -- to tutor her. And while Palin took to her studies with gusto, the campaign made a horrifying discovering in September 2008.

"’Palin couldn't explain why North and South Korea were separate nations. She didn't know what the Fed did,’ John Heilemann and Mark Halperin write in their book Game Change. ‘Asked who attacked America on 9/11, she suggested several times that it was Saddam Hussein. Asked to identify the enemy that her son [in the National Guard] would be fighting in Iraq, she drew a blank.’ And then, of course, Palin told ABC's Charlie Gibson that ‘you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska.”

That last remark became comic fodder for many, particularly Tina Fey. I would add that Palin seemed a bit paranoid about a possible Russian provocation or attack directed at Alaska, based on her strange remarks about Putin and his spy planes circling the state’s air space.

In any event, Hounshell recalls that Palin was right on the money during that ’08 Reno speech in another area of foreign policy – but this was a prediction she probably prefers to forget.

Here’s how Hounshell describes it:

“One of the other ‘crisis scenarios’ she said could befall an Obama administration entailed President Obama sending American troops into Pakistan without Islamabad's permission – ‘invading the sovereign territory of a troubled partner in the war against terrorism.’

“On that, Palin was right again: that 'horrible' scenario came to pass as well, resulting in the killing of Osama bin Laden. But as far as we can tell, she has yet to say Told-Ya-So on Facebook.”