Mark Steyn on Obama’s limited thought processes
Mark Steyn looks at what was going on in Obama’s brain‘ when he drew the “red line” and at the fall out from that moment:
Charles Crawford, Britain’s former ambassador in Serbia and Poland, called last Monday “the worst day for U.S. and wider Western diplomacy since records began.” Obama set it in motion at a press conference last year by drawing his famous “red line.” Unlike, say, the undignified scrums around the Canadian and Australian prime ministers, Obama doesn’t interact enough with the press for it to become normal or real. So at this rare press conference he was, as usual, playing a leader who’s giving a press conference. The “red line” line sounds like the sort of thing a guy playing a president in a movie would say — maybe Harrison Ford in Air Force One or Michael Douglas in The American President. It never occurred to him that out there in the world beyond the Republic of Cool he’d set an actual red line and some dime-store dictator would cross it with impunity. So, for most of the last month, the bipartisan foreign-policy establishment has assured us that, regardless of whether it will accomplish anything, we now have to fire missiles at a sovereign nation because “America’s credibility is at stake.”
One of the things that the Left loved to do during the Reagan presidency was to say that he was a senile old coot who couldn’t distinguish the real world from a Hollywood script. In fact, Reagan was completely in touch with reality, and the reality of politics. It’s Obama who has entered a little cocoon in which he’s pretty sure an enterprising scriptwriter will enter stage left and save him.
And indeed, that’s exactly what happened, except that the script writer was Vladimir Putin who, rather than being a creative genius, is a former KGB agent with an agenda antithetical to American interests and world stability.
If you doubt me, the New York Post managed to get its hands on a first (ahem) draft of Putin’s ultimate editorial:
MOSCOW — Recent events surrounding Syria have prompted me to speak directly to the American people and your leaders. After the president’s speech Tuesday night, let me say what you all know to be true:
Barack, I own you. Or as we say in Russia, the wolf felt pity for the lamb, so he left the skin and bones.
Mr. President, we have much in common. People fear what we might do. We each have a media eating out of our hands. We both hate George W. Bush.
I also share with you the outrage at President Bashar al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons on women and children. And I have made Russia’s displeasure clear to him. Bashar, I said, if you have to murder women and children, conventional arms like the ones I used at Grozny or the rescue at Beslan are just as deadly. Lord knows I have supplied Syria with more than enough weaponry.
Be sure to read it all.
