Syriana Revisited

An older gentleman  once told me , “In America, we’ve always been lucky. We’ve always had the right man as president at the right time.”  My old friend has passed but I think he would have finally thought our luck has run out. Because right now we are rudderless in a sea of danger and President Obama is truly looking like the amateur so many of us thought he was. But now we are joined  by world leaders in Russia, China and the EU  whom he can’t convince to join him in a half baked  plan that changes quicker  than a chameleon on a rainbow. His nebulous remark “fire one over the bow," seems  an awfully expensive way for him to save face. And isn’t that what this misadventure is all about?

At least he has one ally: an adoring media fan base that refuses to report on anything that might put the president in a bad light. Thankfully, for us, that job is getting tougher and tougher for them. And more and more comical as the talking heads contort their bodies in ways once thought  anatomically impossible to provide cover for his every misstep.

Do we hear anything about Eric Holder’s  “Fast and Furious” fiasco? How about the IRS scandal, over-scrutinizing opposition fund raisers in  the last presidential election? How about getting some real accounting about Benghazi? Why not accolades for the  Affordable Health Care Act that looms as another iceberg the ship of state is speeding toward.

He has out and out lied about the infamous red line remark. Now he is now backtracking away from it. Not  his threat, so goes the newest  pronouncement – it was the world’s.

Our omnipotent president, early on,  was willing to go it alone without the Congress but as the disapproving outcry grew louder and louder,  he resorted  to a familiar script, vacillating then obfuscating,  then  looking  for cover if things should go awry. And in the Middle East things usually do.

Using chemical weapons are certainly abhorrent. And we know the despot Assad is not above using them. But so far the only evidence offered is less than conclusive. Would any of us discount the possibility that a rebel  group with Al Qaeda  leanings within Syria might have staged the chemical massacre to make it appear Assad was culpable?

 Remember Saddam and weapons of mass destruction? Look at Iraq and Afghanistan today. What difference did our intervention make? They’re still  quagmires albeit quagmires with schools and a few other amenities. And the rule of thumb here is that whomever we help  will be our enemy in six months after we depart.

The opposition is building against Obama.  Bravo for the Brits for voting against his Syrian machination. They are just as skeptical as most Americans. “Maybe,” as the actor James Woods  so aptly put it, “the UK didn’t want to follow a community organizer into the quicksand.”