Have heard some talking, wondering how it is Obama could have screwed up Syria so badly - and I say to them, have you not been paying attention? Obama comes from an intellectual milieu where the traditional aspects of American power are despised and seen as corrupt, grotesquely unenlightened, evil. His whole purpose is to reduce that power - and not simply because, as with his lefty academic brethren, it does not sit well with his presumptions and naive sympathies - but also because that for people like him the proper business of government is the welfare state and such a leviathan leaves very little room in the budget for aircraft carriers and whatnot. A man who does not particularly like or appreciate what America is or was and probably believes that the republic really didn't become something admirable until it showed the good sense to make him president can hardly be expected to manage or promote a foreign policy that's in the best interests of an America that is or was - no, he's serving a foreign policy that's in the best interests of an America that will be once he's finished ruining it. If you're surprised by this then you haven't been paying attention - or haven't had the great misfortune to overhear the daily conversations spewing like miasmic clouds from the faculty lounges of every university in this country.
We could talk about the delusional idiocy of 'leading from behind' and the mess it left behind in Libya, the misreading of the Arab Spring, the mishandling of Israel, the astoundingly foolish embrace of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the naivety of the Russian reset, the setting of foolish red lines that you don't intend to honor not just with Syria but also much more seriously with Iran, the sequester, the Asia pivot that isn't - but let's go right back to the beginning of the Obama presidency and the putative 'surge' in Afghanistan, the good war as Obama so disingenuously defined it in his primary battle against Hillary. Everyone knew what needed to be done to make the surge work, or at least give it a chance to work - and since Obama had called it the 'good war' it was reasonable to assume he had something of a clue what he was talking about when he called it that - and so it was also reasonable to expect an expeditious decision on its go ahead. Instead it took him, what, six months to decide? Many of the naive pundits of America saw this delay as Obama doing due diligence on a tough choice - but I don't think that's what the dilation was about - it was either caused by him not having a clue what the hell he was talking about when he called Afghanistan the 'good war' and struggling to get up to speed; or, much more likely as far as I'm concerned, the dilation was staged - he wanted no part of that war, it didn't fit with his agenda at all, but he had to find a politically tenable way out of the commitment he had made - therefore, make it look like you've really put a lot of thought into it and then agree to something that makes it look like you're keeping your word but will not get you bogged down in something you really want no part of. There were two things you needed for COIN to have a chance: enough troops on the ground and no deadline. So what was Obama willing to agree to in order to fight this good war of his? Less troops than what was asked for - and, worst of all, he insisted on a deadline. Surge over.
The naive pundits of America may be surprised by Obama's 'incompetence', but I'm guessing there's not a high ranking officer in the US military surprised by it. They wanted no part of Syria - and, sure, there's many practical reasons for them not to want a part of that mess - but don't exclude thought that they wanted no part of it also because there's no way they want to be led into a war by a guy like Obama - they saw first hand what such a thing would look like with the farce that was Libya - and I'm guessing there's a lot of people in the US military right now who are daily crossing their fingers and praying that we somehow get through the next three years without something really bad happening. Unfortunately, for them and us, China et al realize this too and will be asking themselves: Obama has opened the door, how can we not walk through it? Putin just did.
