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Charles P. Pierce: The Syria Delusion Continues
Last edited Wed Dec 28, 2016, 08:47 AM - Edit history (1)
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a51870/syria-obama-leadership-trump/The Syria Delusion Continues
Conservatives explain we could have had it all if President Obama just shown "leadership."
By Charles P. Pierce
Dec 27, 2016
snip//
Because it's easier for an authoritarian state to blow shit up indiscriminately than it is to convince an obstructionist Congress and a war-sick country to invest in putting a stop to it. That's why all of these things that the U.S. "could have done" are risks that nobody in the congressional majority was willing to share with the president. (Who's going to be on the ground to keep the "safe zones" safe? Who's going to patrol the no-fly zones?) Putin Envy is such an unattractive thing.
That coolness, that no-drama Obama, cost lives in Syria. Instead of rallying the United States to a worthy cause — intervening to save lives and avoid a refugee crisis that is still destabilizing Europe — he threw in the towel. The banner he flew was one of American diminishment. One could agree. One could not be proud. Since the end of World War II, American leadership has been essential to maintain world peace. Whether we liked it or not, we were the world's policeman. There was no other cop on the beat. Now that leadership is gone. So, increasingly, will be peace.
snip//
Keep an eye on this branch of political analysis, however, because there is going to be a concerted effort among these people between now and when El Caudillo del Mar-A-Lago first screws an important pooch to diminish the accomplishments of the last eight years, because that will be easier than admitting that the country's rickety 18th century mechanisms have delivered the country into the hands of an unbalanced middle-schooler with a cabinet full of plutocrats, military freakazoids, and manifest incompetents. The recent abstention at the UN on the vote condemning Israeli settlements has already jump-started the process.
But that process began during the campaign, when Trump was able to portray the country as a half-nuked wasteland of blasted hopes while the stock market boomed, job growth continued, and the president's approval rating went up to the mid-50s. It was helped along by folks like Morning Squint, who now is going to preside over Ground Zero of the attempt to convince us that we didn't have it as good as we thought we did. Beschloss should be ashamed of himself, too, by the way.
This is going to get a lot worse before it possibly gets any better.
8 replies
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= new reply since forum marked as read
And a Happy New Year to you. 
....the TOS would be changed to include this emphatic clause: Any sucker who participates in rewriting the history of Barack Obama's administration along Right Wing lines will have a pizza delivery so fast it will make their head spin. Subclause: That goes for his Sec of State Hillary Clinton as well.
