Diplomatic Acrobatics

Submitted by Stephen (South Africa), Sep 12, 2013 at 04:52

Daniel I am a fan of yours but your conclusions here are disturbing. Obama worse than George Bush ? - whose wars have cost Americans trillions of dollars and countless of American and Iraqi etc lives, and whose Republican party government was at the helm of a world-wide recession. Are you kidding me? The red line is being applied. The credible threat of military action was the stick that brought Putin and therefor Syria into line and offer diplomatic solutions. When circumstances change it is not a sign of weakness to respond accordingly, especially when the majority of Americans are dead set against another military involvement and unintended consequences. It is Putin and not Obama who has boxed himself in because he now has to deliver and if not will be seen internationally to be weak and ineffective and even fraudulent. . But no. You still want to go and bomb and make no mistake the euphemism collateral damage will apply. So more children are going to be killed and maimed in the name of what? Yes, hundreds of thousands of lives and millions of refugees should have been saved by the international community.

But it is not Obama's fault that the UN is disfunctional. It is not Obama's fault that war-weary Americans do not want to be condemned to another civil war in the middle east, and held hostage to a role as the moral conscience of the world. The cold war with the Soviet Union is over. So what if the USA is less hubristic ala GWB, and its credibility is all the better for it. Everyone knows how powerful it still is but your dogma seems to be that it must keep proving it to its allies and enemies no matter what the cost. You see it as an ignominuous performance but I believe that Obama has stood firm on his stand against weapons of mass destruction and the others have backed down, and this is a strong message for the enemies of America and Israel including Iran. Assad must at some time be taken to the ICC for crimes against humanity but to censure Obama personally in the way you do is your ideological conspiracy and not becoming.

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