Yesterday, in front of a Presidents’ Day crowd at the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, Virginia, House majority leader Eric Cantor unloaded one of the most comprehensive critiques to date of the Obama White House’s foreign policy. “An America That Leads” hit all the salient points—from adversaries like Syria and Iran to Asian allies, like South Korea and Japan who “rightfully question whether they can trust the United States to stand up to nuclear-armed North Korea if we cannot follow through on our threats against a much weaker Syria.”

Cantor correctly noted that the administration’s Syria policy “is a big reason our allies do not trust us, and our adversaries do not fear us.” Obama threatened military strikes after Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad’s “chemical weapons are but a sideshow.” The issue rather is that “Syria is not merely a humanitarian disaster, but a slow-motion strategic catastrophe that poses significant threats to America and some of its closest partners.”