Said Jay Carney about President Obama's sequence of order, counter-order, disorder, over Syria (tip to Instapundit):
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney defended his boss Thursday after a blistering few weeks of criticism in Congress and elsewhere over his handling of the Syria crisis.
Carney said the American people “appreciate a president who doesn’t celebrate decisiveness for decisiveness’ sake.”
Dude. Seriously?
The man is good. How he could complete that without laughing or possibly quitting on live TV over the shame of saying those words is beyond me.
Confronted with the three-headed monster of Syria, Iran, and Russia, we've bravely run to Geneva:
Even one of the biggest Obama administration court jesters in the media had limits to his ballad of bravery. Fareed Zakaria (who, as we all know, couldn't find his own buttocks with both hands and a GPS signal) starts out praising President Obama for abandoning his red line and embracing this chimerical disarmament deal as if it is superior to red lines and assertions that Assad must go, yet ends up comparing the president's Syria performance poorly to Bush's Iraq diplomacy and domestic support (come on, in 2002 even Kerry voted to go to war with Iraq!):
If the Obama administration believes that the ban on chemical weapons really is an international norm in danger of erosion and that the threat of a military strike is the way to shore it up, it needs to build some support among Congress, the U.N. Security Council, NATO, the European Union, the Arab League or other such groups. Recall that the Bush administration in the run-up to Iraq got congressional authorization; as its basis for action, it could point to 16 U.N. Security Council resolutions that Iraq had broken. After the invasion, 38 countries sent troops. It is ironic that Washington’s sole goal is to uphold an international norm, but it faces opposition from most countries and international public opinion. The negotiations do buy time for Syria, but also for the Obama administration.
Wait. What?
Irony? Perhaps. Predictable? You betcha.
So after 5 years of smart diplomacy, President Obama can't even approach the global alliance and domestic support that Bush assembled! International community organizing is hard, eh?
If you just read the beginning of the Zakaria article, you'd think the man was totally in the tank for Obama. But if you manage to reach the last paragraph--almost a footnote or appendix that most won't read--you get this zinger over the absolute failure of hope and change.
