Click on WORD or PDF for full content
Alluding to Bismarck saying “there is a Providence that protects idiots, drunkards, children and the United States of America”, Craig Pirrong posts on Syria.
Second terms seldom end well. Some implode in scandal (Lewinsky; Iran-Contra; Watergate). Some dissolve into incoherence, as second raters take over key positions. Some are overwhelmed by events, frequently of their own making, combined with exhaustion (Bush comes to mind especially). All are bedeviled by the end-game problem. Many-especially Republican administrations-are particularly hampered by a hostile press. Modestly successful first term administrations should take a lesson from James K. Polk and rest on their laurels, but he is the exception that proves the rule.
But I am hard pressed to find a historical precedent for the public humiliation of a president so early in his second term, due to his own strategic foreign policy blunders, as we are witnessing with Obama at present. …
… There are those who take glee in Obama’s distress. I am not one of them. Through his blunders he has humiliated his office, and humiliated the country. His personal distress is irrelevant: the damage to the nation far too relevant indeed. He has emboldened our enemies-and yes, Russia is an enemy and views the US as its enemy-and dismayed our friends. Radical and dangerous forces-notably the Iranians-will be tempted to take advantage, and allies disconcerted by Obama’s fecklessness and confusion (Israel, Saudi Arabia) may feel impelled to act on their own in self-defense, despairing of the ability and willingness of the US to act decisively. Such a situation is fraught with danger, especially with a wounded president. That the wounds are self-inflicted makes it all the more discouraging.
I noted the other day that Obama sounded an uncertain trumpet on Syria. Demons have responded to that call. I have no idea how he retrieves the situation, especially when he must rely on pompous buffoons like Kerry and Hagel and Biden for advice and execution.
I have often said I hope Bismarck was right about the special providence that America shares with fools and drunkards. Putin certainly doesn’t believe in it, but never have we needed more for this to be true. Obama has definitely proven himself to be no Bismarck, but he had better hope Bismarck was right.
Daniel Henninger calls it the “Laurel and Hardy Presidency.”
After writing in the London Telegraph that Monday was “the worst day for U.S. and wider Western diplomacy since records began,” former British ambassador Charles Crawford asked simply: “How has this happened?”
On the answer, opinions might differ. Or maybe not. A consensus assessment of the past week’s events could easily form around Oliver Hardy’s famous lament to the compulsive bumbler Stan Laurel: “Here’s another nice mess you’ve gotten us into!”
In the interplay between Barack Obama and John Kerry, it’s not obvious which one is Laurel and which one is Hardy. But diplomatic slapstick is not funny. No one wants to live in a Laurel and Hardy presidency. In a Laurel and Hardy presidency, red lines vanish, shots across the bow are word balloons, and a display of U.S. power with the whole world watching is going to be “unbelievably small.”
The past week was a perfect storm of American malfunction. Colliding at the center of a serious foreign-policy crisis was Barack Obama’s manifest skills deficit, conservative animosity toward Mr. Obama, Republican distrust of his leadership, and the reflexive opportunism of politicians from Washington to Moscow.
It is Barack Obama’s impulse to make himself and whatever is in his head the center of attention. By now, we are used to it. But this week he turned himself, the presidency and the United States into a spectacle. We were alternately shocked and agog at these events. Now the sobering-up has to begin. …
Let’s turn to the left/liberal media. What does Time’s Joe Klein think?
It has been one of the more stunning and inexplicable displays of presidential incompetence that I’ve ever witnessed. The failure cuts straight to the heart of a perpetual criticism of the Obama White House: that the President thinks he can do foreign policy all by his lonesome. This has been the most closely held American foreign-policy-making process since Nixon and Kissinger, only there’s no Kissinger. There is no éminence grise—think of someone like Brent Scowcroft—who can say to Obama with real power and credibility, Mr. President, you’re doing the wrong thing here. Let’s consider the consequences if you call the use of chemical weapons a “red line.” Or, Mr. President, how can you talk about this being “the world’s red line” if the world isn’t willing to take action? …
… The public presentation of his policies has been left to the likes of Secretary of State John Kerry, whose statements had to be refuted twice by the President in the Syria speech. Kerry had said there might be a need for “boots on the ground” in Syria. (Obama: No boots.) Kerry had said the military strikes would be “unbelievably small.” (Obama: We don’t do pinpricks.) Worst of all, Kerry bumbled into prematurely mentioning a not-very-convincing Russian “plan” to get rid of the Syrian chemical weapons. This had been under private discussion for months, apparently, the sort of dither that bad guys—Saddam, the Iranians, Assad—always use as a delaying tactic. Kerry, in bellicose mode, seemed to be making fun of the idea—and the Russians called him on it. Kerry’s staff tried to walk back this megagaffe, calling it a “rhetorical exercise.” As it stands, no one will be surprised if the offer is a ruse, but the Administration is now trapped into seeing it through and gambling that it will be easier to get a congressional vote if it fails.
Which gets close to the Obama Administration’s problem: there have been too many “rhetorical exercises,” too many loose pronouncements of American intent without having game-planned the consequences. This persistent problem—remember the President’s needless and dangerous assertion that his policy wasn’t the “containment” of the Iranian nuclear program—has metastasized into a flurry of malarkey about Syria. It’s been two years since he said, “Assad must step aside.” He announced the “red line” and “the world’s red line.” And now, “We can stop children from being gassed.” The Chinese believe that the strongest person in the room says the least.
Jennifer Rubin lists 10 reasons why it is now worse.
1. His Russia gambit lost whatever conservative support he had built up for a strike on Syria.
2. We are now at Vladimir Putin’s mercy, which he is already exploiting skillfully. The Russian despot took to the pages of the New York Times to deplore American exceptionalism and to denounce potential U.S. action. (He used the same “the rebels are all jihadists” claptrap that American isolationists use.) He accused the rebels of using the chemical weapons, an ominous sign for a chemical weapons exchange. Even worse was the pathetic U.S. response: “That’s all irrelevant. He put this proposal forward and he’s now invested in it. That’s good. That’s the best possible reaction. He’s fully invested in Syria’s CW disarmament and that’s potentially better than a military strike — which would deter and degrade but wouldn’t get rid of all the chemical weapons. He now owns this. He has fully asserted ownership of it and he needs to deliver.” This is delusional and frightening, to be blunt. Obama’s international humiliation will continue.
3. The media figured out quickly the Russia gambit is ridiculous and therefore is unlikely to treat the morass to follow as anything other than Obama’s fault. …
Roger Simon posts on Putin’s NY Times column.
… Down with American exceptionalism, but up with the Lord. What a righteous man. And good for the New York Times, known for its atheistic tendencies, to give him space to express these views and make the world safer for humanity.
But it shouldn’t end here. The Times should open up more space to President Putin. Perhaps he should be featured in the sports and travel sections. He is known to be a great hunter and fisherman. As recently as this year he apparently caught the biggest pike on record. Who knows? He may out swim Mao yet, or even Diana Nyad.
So he is just the man for the New York Times — an international liar who has just made a complete fool of the president of the United States and shamed our country in the process while putting into question the entire future of the Middle East.
For his next column, perhaps he can finally tell us what happened in Benghazi. Sadly, there’s a better chance he’ll do it than our own administration.
Max Boot says Putin is spiking the football.
More than 100,000 dead in Syria—a figure growing by 5,000 or so deaths every month. Millions more displaced. Chemical weapons used. Al-Qaeda and Hezbollah on the offensive. The United States humiliated and powerless on the sidelines. The situation in Syria is about as grim as you can imagine—and Vladimir Putin is loving every minute of it. That impression comes across very strongly in his New York Times op-ed today in which he takes a typically brazen victory lap after having wrestled global leadership, at least temporarily, away from a confused and hesitant American president.
As usual with Putin, he overdoes it—the man who parades around bare-chested to show off his pecs does not know the meaning of “subtlety.” Putin begins by claiming that only the UN Security Council can authorize the use of military force. Funny, I don’t remember the UN resolutions justifying Putin’s attack on Georgia in 2008 or his homicidal campaign in Chechnya which has killed tens of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands. …