Obama's Foreign Policy Goes Viral

From The Wilderness via H/T Ace of Spades HQ:

Flash back to 2011, and far as presidencies are concerned, it feels like a millennium ago. Barack Obama was basking in the fullness of the Arab Spring, posing as the personal midwife to a New Birth of Freedom as he polished his Peace Prize in front of the world. Truly this was a man who could not lose: it seemed like all he had to do was demand some former ally steeped in domestic conflict bow to his diplomatic omnipotence and boom: Instant Democracy. The media tactfully aided Obama by moving on from covering these international hotspots almost immediately after President Santa had finished gifting them with new regimes, so we wouldn’t have to trouble ourselves with any messy details about their aftermaths (until Ambassador Stevens found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time a year later, that is). The afterglow was unfaded. Barack Obama was still the fresh-faced President Hope and Change. Oprah was still crying. But as it all fell to pieces, Obama received a brutal education in the truth that community organizing on the South Side of Chicago is light years away from an attempt to community organize the Middle East.
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When Barack Obama demanded Assad step down in 2011, he took immediate ownership of any consequences to follow. Assad — not being much more than a photo-op for Nancy Pelosi or a dinner date for John Kerry, and owing us utterly nothing (unlike Mubarak or Khaddafi) — told Obama to get bent around a tree, and from that point onward the administration’s strategy has been one long assay into the question of how best to manage an Asshole Who May Still Be Preferable To Outright Anarchy. Obama hedged military action against Assad and against his (now obviously disastrous) decision to withdraw from Iraq and the impending nuclear deal with Iran. When his declaration that Assad Must Go went ignored (and thus became problematic), he simply crossed it off his list, told a nefarious Vladimir Putin to handle it, and went golfing. When his administration realized that any military intervention in Syria would complicate his Iran nuclear deal, he folded. Except the world didn’t fold with him.

When reports emerged that Assad had utilized chlorine gas against both rebels and civilians, Obama was suddenly boxed into a world which preceded his ascension and more importantly, didn’t give a damn about what he thought. Obama and his famously anti-war Secretary of State John Kerry reaped the consequences of spending the prior five years demonizing the difficult decisions made by their predecessors, either unaware or unfazed by the idea that they might one day have to rally the country and the world around a “Red Line” they themselves had set, and as it turns out weren’t very good or very interested in necessitating either.

A foreign policy based on hoping that no one will call your bluff is dangerous and disastrous.

Being in charge means you're the adult in the room, shop's in charge. Grand Speeches and a fawning media will not intimidate, foreign dictators. Ivory tower theory goes out the window in the real world. Something The Leader did not anticipate or is prepared to handle.

His name will forever be linked with Neville Chamberlain as a feckless weak leader, who will be responsible for many deaths due to wars rooted during his watch.

Andf the World will suffer the consequences for decades, as he golfs and shoots hoops.