By Victor Davis Hanson
We are told hypocrisies are Obama’s problem: Republicans who are usually pro-war don’t support this war only because of Obama; Democrats who are usually anti-war can’t support this war for Obama without being shown up as sudden pro-war hypocrites.
Some of that may be true, but the real reason is in the Oval Office, and it concerns a lack of purpose and commitment that has scared off 70 percent of the American people.
The problem Obama and his team have in convincing voters and the Congress to support his preemptory bombing of Syria is that few believe this administration is really serious about its foreign policy — and they do not see the sloppy idea of killing a few hundred or thousand people and destroying some stuff in Syria as essential to restoring American credibility in the Middle East, boxing in Iran, and creating a Third Way in Syria.
Instead, Syria over the last year has sort of been like the employer mandate, one moment absolutely essential to the survival of the country, the next a bit problematic, and so, well, let’s just forget about it for the time being.
If Obama does not bomb Syria next week, in two weeks we will hear the usual recriminations between golf outings — the same old, same old blame Congress, Bush, etc. Then, in three weeks, he will be back to the next empty pontification and make-no-mistake-about-it sermon, and he will have a new war to wage on the home front against all sorts of dastardly domestic opponents before resetting abroad. Sometimes the administration’s unserious attitude is apparent in the trivial (e.g., Obama and Reggie Love playing serial hands of cards during the bin Laden raid, Obama vanishing during the long night of the Benghazi disaster, David Axelrod sneering of the Syria vote that the congressional dog is hitting the car).
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