At least when Jimmy Carter speaks, he’s undermining some other president’s foreign policy. Not so President Obama, who may be the first president who seems determined to undermine his own.
As a result, those lined up against him are not just the usual assortment of leftist and libertarians opposed to any exercise of US military force. Conservative hawks who were agitating against Assad back when Hillary Clinton was calling him a “reformer” worry that a strike led by Obama will be worse than no strike at all. Even among the international community that Obama invoked so often yesterday, he has less support than any of his predecessors.
When George H.W. Bush took us to war against Saddam Hussein in 1990, he had the blessing of the UN Security Council and a coalition of nearly three dozen countries. When George W. Bush did it a decade later, he had a weaker UN mandate but even more countries. But Barack Obama has now managed the extraordinary feat of turning even Britain against us.
If the president would stop telling everyone what he’s not going to do, he would find he has some good options. These include but are not limited to missile attacks designed to strip Bashar al-Assad of the air power he has used so ruthlessly against his enemies by taking out airports, control towers and the like.
Leading from behind won’t cut it. The president will neither recover his credibility nor deter Assad from his deadly course until he strikes in a way that either topples the Assad regime or deprives him of his most important military capabilities. Such a strike would open up good possibilities for Syria, and make Iran and other enemies think twice about their own actions.
Notwithstanding his insistence yesterday that he hasn’t made a decision, the whole world now knows the president has committed America to military action. We urge him to make it count.