Some serious questions for those of you supporting the President's plan

[Chathamization]

29. I imagine it’s the typical shoot missiles and declare success strategy that presidents fall back on

when they know they can’t do anything. The establishment has been pushing for Obama to bomb the Assad regime and give weapons to ISIS nice people who swear to us that they’re not ISIS for years, and are now saying the current problems are the result of him not doing that (if only we took out the people fighting ISIS and gave ISIS weapons they would have been destroyed…what?).

Obama’s resisted this, and that (as well as various comments he’s made) suggests that he realizes nothing good will come of it. The US can’t bomb warring factions to peace. The strikes will be enough to look like were doing something (since doing something is all a lot of people seem to care about), and the three year timeframe is long enough to dump the rest on the next administration.

The troublesome part is the establishment in general seems to be more hawkish than Obama, and it seems unlikely that we’ll have a president less hawkish than him anytime soon.