President Obama is serious this time. No, really. Critics of the president’s approach to the Syrian crisis don’t understand the many nuances undergirding the president’s philosophy of using “smart power” to lead from behind. Forget all those previous signals of how serious he is about taking decisive action to stop the killing. He means it. This time. No, really, he does.
Obama’s history of dithering captures the most basic problem confronting the chief executive on Syria: He’s promised action over and over again, but in the end has actually offered little more than words. That is why nobody should be surprised that Americans, as well as leaders in Moscow, Beijing, London, Paris, Tehran and Damascus, find it difficult to put much stock in what Obama says now about the Syrian crisis and what he might do in response to Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad’s blatant use of chemical weapons against the Syrian people.
