What kind of president would say that America’s credibility is on the line but that his isn’t?
Pundits rightly have been talking about the president’s patently absurd insistence that he didn’t set a red line. But what shocks me even more is the president’s disassociation from the United States, whose moral stature—unlike that of the president—he says is threatened.
Has any president of the United States ever said anything even remotely like this:
“My credibility is not on the line — the international community’s credibility is on the line,” President Barack Obama said Wednesday in Sweden regarding his desire for a military strike in response to a suspected August chemical attack in Syria. He said the question is, after going through all the evidence: “Are we going to try to find a reason not to act? And if that’s the case, then I think the (world) community should admit it.”
President Barack Obama said Wednesday the “red line” he previously spoke of regarding the use of chemical weapons in Syria wasn’t his own, but the world’s. “I didn’t set a red line. The world set a red line. The world set a red line when governments representing 98%” of the world’s population “passed a treaty forbidding (chemical weapons) use, even when countries are engaged in war,” Obama said in Sweden.
We’re seeing the character of the man who will be president for three more years. He is a man who can say “my military” but who can’t say “my fault.” If Congress votes for a strike on Syria—and perhaps if it doesn’t—he will prosecute the military action. As for the vote in Congress, even Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton has said that Democrat loyalty is his only hope now.
Former President George W. Bush demonstrated grace in the face of worldwide ridicule. President Obama—not so much. His press conference yesterday on foreign soil was a national disgrace. We don't know yet whether Congress will give him what he wants (whatever that really is). But, meanwhile, he has got to stop talking before he makes the country look more foolish.