On Syria, it seems Obama’s made up his mind about what to do but then again perhaps he’s not made up his mind at all.
Maybe it’s all a clever strategic head-fake on Obama’s part. I doubt it, however; his slowness to come to a decision in military matters has become legendary.
The whole thing is also an opportunity to visit Hamlet’s famous “To be or not to be” soliloquy on procrastination and the perils of decision-making and gear it to Obama’s predicament. Surprisingly little needed to be changed to make it fit:
To strike, or not to strike: that is the question:Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to sufferThe slings and arrows of outrageous Assad,Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,And by opposing end them? To attack: to ditherNo more; and by attack to say we endThe heart-ache and the thousand natural shocksThat Syria is heir to, ’tis a consummationDevoutly to be wish’d. To act, to attack;To attack: perchance to depose: ay, there’s the rub;For in its wake what next may comeWhether or not Assad shuffles off this worldwide stage,Should give us pause: there’s the respectThat makes calamity of intervention;For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,The pangs of chemical war, the law’s delay,The insolence of office and the spurnsThat patient merit of the unworthy takes,When he himself might his mark makeWith a bare missile? who would tyrants bear,To defy the red lines that he drew?But that the dread of something afterward,The unknown consequences in whose gripA legacy might founder, puzzles the willAnd makes us rather bear those ills we haveThan fly to others that we know not of?Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;And thus the native hue of resolutionIs sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,And enterprises of great pith and momentWith this regard their currents turn awry,And lose the name of action.–Soft you now!The fair MSM! Sycophants, in thy orisonsBe all my sins forgotten.
[Neo-neocon is a writer with degrees in law and family therapy, who blogs at neo-neocon.]
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