Ah, our chief diplomat in action:
Syria's President Bashar al-Assad is not ready to step down yet to make way for a transition government, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Thursday.
"Obviously he is not ready at this point in time," Kerry said in an interview with Al-Arabiya on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos.
Oh? Assad isn't ready at this point in time to go? Well, all right then. Get comfortable, Mr. Assad.
Yes. From "Assad must go" to "Assad must go--when he is good and ready."
Oddly enough, it just took Assad's use of chemical weapons on his own people to get that qualifier added.
If we sucked any more, this would be the Hoover administration.
UPDATE: The Washington Post editors rightly note we suck:
[The] diplomatic initiative that Mr. Kerry launched offers no means to hold the regime of Bashar al-Assad accountable for these atrocities, or even to stop them. On the contrary: It may serve to prop up the Assad government by treating it as a legitimate party to negotiations about Syria’s future. Mr. Kerry insists the talks will lead to a transitional government that excludes Mr. Assad, but the Syrian delegation flatly rejects this premise, and there is no indication that its allies Russia and Iran think otherwise.
Yet the editorial also bizarrely praises the chemical weapons deal which has been the primary means of granting Assad legitimacy as a partner of the West, which Assad is leveraging into a chance to win a war he should have lost already.
And what's this slamming of "Kerry's feckless diplomacy" nonsense? Is Kerry somehow freelancing our diplomacy without the knowledge and approval of the president? Is this one more thing that will surprise the president when he reads it in the newspapers? If it isn't clear to the editors, Kerry works for President Obama.
This is President Obama's feckless diplomacy. And it sucks.
