Whether it’s “pivoting” or “rebalancing,” the Obama administration’s unceasing efforts to turn retreat into a virtue – particularly when it comes to the Middle East – have become a distinguishing feature of this president’s national security strategy.

The New York Times’s weekend account of its interview with Susan Rice, wherein the national security adviser spins the Syria fiasco as a kind of “midcourse correction,” marks a new chapter in the leading-from-the-rear saga.  In elaborating on the president’s recent speech to the U.N. General Assembly, Rice explained that the administration “can’t just be consumed 24/7 by one region, important as it is.  [President Obama] thought it was a good time to step back and reassess, in a very critical and kind of no-holds-barred way, how we conceive the region.”