Obama's Speech

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbIrm42zYTU


Charles Krauthammer dubbed this the “oddest presidential speech ever,” and he has a point. Presidential addresses from the White House during prime time usually have a clear purpose, or what I called on Twitter last night a “Big Ask.” This particular bully pulpit isn’t used for fireside chats or for campaign speeches, but to focus American attention on a particular and inexorable course of action, and to rally Americans behind the Commander in Chief for that action.
Yesterday, though, Obama sounded contradictory and confused.  He attempted to rouse moral outrage over the use of chemical weapons against scores or hundreds children in Damascus on August 21st, which is an easy case to make — but thousands of children have been killed in the Syrian civil war in all sorts of ways, by all sides. Obama argued that Bashar al-Assad had to be deterred from using chemical weapons in the future, but left out any call for regime change, which is still the official strategic goal of the Obama administration. To Americans reluctant to engage in another war, Obama cajoled us to action, claiming that only the United States had the power to bring Assad to heel.
And then almost in the same breath, Obama then acknowledged that a diplomatic solution had arisen, despite two weeks of beating the drums for war. Just after arguing that only the US military could solve the problem, Obama said that he was turning to Russia for a potential solution. Not only that, but he also announced that he had asked Congress to hold off on a vote to authorize military action until the Russia and UN track played itself out.  This change was necessitated by the fumbling of his Secretary of State, even though Obama himself had just called the UN “hocus pocus.”
The speech may have been short, but it far outstripped its substance and its symbolic value. Before a President gets up to wave the bloody shirt, is it too much to ask that he (a) knows what the hell he wants to do, (b) actually has decided on military action as a last resort instead of a first resort, and (c) and knows who we’re fighting against — and for?