"Game Changer" Alert

Walter Russell Mead's blog:

... Obama wants it both ways: he’s demanded Assad step down and called preventing genocide “a core national-security interest,” but promised in his second inaugural that “a decade of war is now ending.”

He’s also threatened war with Syria if chemical weapons are used and proclaimed a “responsibility to protect,” but seeks to slash defense spending, might withdraw a U.S. carrier from the Gulf, and vetoed his cabinet’s recommendations on Syria.

.... Iran, Assad, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Israel might no longer know what to expect from the U.S., or believe anything its Commander in Chief says. When one of the region’s most powerful actors projects that kind of weakness, it’s a game changer.

 

Indeed.

Comments

[Mannie Sherberg]

On the O'Reilly show last night, Dennis Miller bestowed the ultimate moniker on our esteemed national leader: Obama, he said, is a "debonair grifter." That's as close to perfect a description as anyone will ever come up with; Shakespeare couldn't have done better. All grifters -- debonair or otherwise -- share one quality: they cannot be believed. Their words, no matter how honeyed or how eloquent, never jibe with anything real. Our friends know this; our enemies know this. Obama's not projecting weakness; he's just doing what grifters do -- spinning words to his own advantage. Call him what you will -- debonair grifter, jaunty swindler, suave highbinder -- he's always -- first and foremost -- a political sharper. My Yiddish-speaking forebears would've called him a "shtarker" -- a man who mixes bravura with phony bravado. That's what the SOTU was all about.