President Obama has a habit of trying to make himself look like the smartest guy in the room when things aren’t going his way and the disaster unfolding in Syria is no exception.
Speaking to the press Friday, Obama claimed that Putin is operating in Syria out of weakness and that this is all some sort of ruse on Russia’s behalf.
Jenna Lifhits of the Washington Free Beacon:
Obama: Putin Sent Military Into Syria ‘Out of Weakness’Obama echoed the White House narrative that Russia was forced to enter Syria because the Assad regime, a long-time Kremlin client state, is in danger of collapse.“Mr. Putin had to go into Syria not out of strength but out of weakness because his client Mr. Assad was crumbling and it was insufficient for him simply to send them arms and money. Now he’s got to put in his own planes and his own pilots,” Obama said.In an attempt to rebuke the popular notion that Putin is a mastermind who the White House is scrambling to keep up with, Obama reminded the audience that Russia is part of a three-member coalition while the United States leads 60 nations.“I didn’t see after he made that speech in United Nations suddenly the 60-nation coalition that we have started lining up behind him. Iran and Assad make up Mr. Putin’s coalition at the moment. The rest of the world makes up ours,” he said.
Here’s the video:
One could argue that Putin is making a mistake and that Russia will get bogged down in Syria just as they did in Afghanistan many years ago, but Obama still comes out of this looking feckless.
Jonah Goldberg gets to the heart of the issue in his new column at National Review:
Putin’s Air Strikes in Syria Are Merely the Latest Example of the Obama Doctrine’s FailureIf the humiliation of the Obama administration continues at this rate, by this time next week you should expect to see Secretary of State John Kerry on all fours at the United Nations, getting paddled by the Russian foreign minister and shouting, “Thank you, comrade! May I have another?”On Monday, President Obama and Vladimir Putin had a meeting at the United Nations. All Putin wanted from it was a photo of the two men huddling together. The Russian president needed to show his people that he’s still a major player on the world stage, a big man driving events. Obama, who spent much of the last year trying to isolate the butcher of Ukraine, gave Putin exactly what he wanted. In wall-to-wall coverage, Russian media celebrated the big man’s diplomatic triumph and his geo-strategic genius.
Read the rest here.
If worst comes to worst, Obama can just draw another red line.
Not that it’ll mean anything.
Featured image via YouTube.
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