For a devastating assessment of President Obama’s Sept. 10 speech announcing a new policy of military engagement in the Middle East, read Walter Russell Mead’s piece in his Via Meadia blog entitled, bleakly, “A President Surrenders.” Mead is by no means a partisan Obama basher. But in 2011 he opposed both his “lead from behind” intervention in Libya and opposed also his decision not to intervene in Syria. The most devastating part, in my view, is the following:
“By making such a point about ‘no ground troops,’ the President did two very bad things. First, he reduced the enemy’s uncertainty about our intentions. Second, he gave a global impression that he needed to promise ‘no ground troops’ to the American people because he thinks that otherwise his political position is so weak that he couldn’t get support for an air war. This is a bad mistake: it suggests to our enemies that our resolve is shaky. Even and especially if that is true, we don’t want to tell them this.”
