How Do You Define 'Weak'? An American President Who Draws 'Red Lines' With Disappearing Ink...

 Kafr Nabl, Syria, 2011

Remember when President Obama drew his famous 'red line' on Syria and said that he wasn't bluffing?

Well, we know now that he was.  Not just by his actions, but from his own administration.  From the NYT:

The origins of this dilemma can be traced in large part to a weekend last August, when alarming intelligence reports suggested the besieged Syrian government might be preparing to use chemical weapons. After months of keeping a distance from the conflict, Mr. Obama felt he had to become more directly engaged.

In a frenetic series of meetings, the White House devised a 48-hour plan to deter President Bashar al-Assad of Syria by using intermediaries like Russia and Iran to send a message that one official summarized as, “Are you crazy?” But when Mr. Obama emerged to issue the public version of the warning, he went further than many aides realized he would.

Moving or using large quantities of chemical weapons would cross a “red line” and “change my calculus,” the president declared in response to a question at a news conference, to the surprise of some of the advisers who had attended the weekend meetings and wondered where the “red line” came from. With such an evocative phrase, the president had defined his policy in a way some advisers wish they could take back.

“The idea was to put a chill into the Assad regime without actually trapping the president into any predetermined action,” said one senior official, who, like others, discussed the internal debate on the condition of anonymity. But “what the president said in August was unscripted,” another official said. Mr. Obama was thinking of a chemical attack that would cause mass fatalities, not relatively small-scale episodes like those now being investigated, except the “nuance got completely dropped.”

As a result, the president seems to be moving closer to providing lethal assistance to the Syrian rebels, even though he rejected such a policy just months ago. American officials have even discussed with European allies the prospect of airstrikes to take out Syrian air defenses, airplanes and missile delivery systems, if government use of chemical weapons is confirmed.

This just makes his decision to go into Libya even worse although I doubt he comprehends it.

The photo above says it all.

The ‘possible poor victims of Benghazi’ needed American protection immediately, before a slaughter could take place. 

The ‘actual poor victims of Syria’ don’t need American protection at all because, as an Obama adviser said, ‘If Assad Drops Sarin On Own People, What’s That Got To Do With Us?’ 

OK, genius, then if Moammar Qaddafi had used chemical weapons on his own people in Benghazi, WHAT DID THAT HAVE TO DO WITH US? 

The simple truth is that Libya has oil and Syria not so much.

For all of the Obama Firsters that screamed that ‘Iraq was a war for oil,’ which is weird since not a single American oil company won a lease in the Iraqi lease sale, THEN WASN’T LIBYA A MILITARY INTERVENTION FOR OIL, TOO? 

Obama told the Muslim world in his speech in Cairo that he understood them and would be a different leader. Actually, in their eyes, he is WORSE THAN BUSH. 

He has BETRAYED them. He has proven that all Muslim lives are equal, but some are more equal than others…and they generally live in countries where there is oil.

And, now, we will be dealing with the fallout for years or decades...

Old & Busted:

‘As president of the United States, I don’t bluff.’

 

- President Barack Obama, 3 March 2013

 

  New Hotness:
 

 

‘Eric Bashar, don’t call my bluff (again).’ 

 

- President Barack Obama, 13 June 2011 2 May 2013

Obama:  The Strong Horse Weak Ass

Related Reading:

Syria, ‘Red-Lines,’ and Obama’s Feckless Foreign Policy