Lose-Lose

In today's USA Today, Glen Reynolds make a snarky but entirely accurate comment on five years of foreign policy under the Obama administration:

One of the things we were promised back in the 2008 election campaign was that under a Democratic administration America would be better liked and more influential in the world. Forget those dumb cowboys in the Bush/Cheney administration whose brash style grated on foreign sensibilities: Smooth, Europhile Democrats would win over the world, ushering in an era of peace and good feeling.

So, as Sarah Palin might say, how's that hopey-changey stuff workin' out for ya?

Whether it's Hilary Clinton's "reset" with Russia that has turned into an intensely adversarial relationship; an "open hand" offered to Iran that has morphed into a dangerous path toward nuclear weapons; the support of a supposedly "moderate" Muslim Brotherhood that is anything but moderate, or today's latest debacle—the Syrian "red line"—Obama's foreign policy is incoherent, amateurish, sloppy, and incompetent. Worse than any of that, it's dangerous in that it could lead to broader regional instability and war.

As Democrats are fond of saying, "Elections have consequences." The consequences of the 2-time election of Barack Obama look pretty dismal at the moment.

The administration is back in perpetual campaign mode, trying to cajole members of the Left and Right to support the President's wrong-headed attack plan for Syria. The Washington Post reports:

Obama’s proposal to invite Congress dominated the Friday discussion in the Oval Office. He had consulted almost no one about his idea. In the end, the president made clear he wanted Congress to share in the responsibility for what happens in Syria. As one aide put it, “We don’t want them to have their cake and eat it, too.”

So it seems that the President is in CYA mode. After getting our country into this mess, he now seeks political cover for his own very bad idea. It's a good political move because no matter how things turn out, he can blame congress, but it's a very bad geopolitical move. If an attack is robust enough tp cause Assad to lose power (a bad idea proposed by GOP senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham), it would only put even more dangerous people in control of the very chemical weapons that the President professes to abhor. Or, if the attack has no tangible effect, countries like Iran will conclude that we have neither the will nor the ability to effect change in the region. Barring a miracle, it's lose-lose.
But that should come as no surprise. "Lose-lose" propositions are the most common outcome of decisions made by this president.