In-Flight Engine Overhaul

The spin doctors and apologists are coming out in force: the events regarding Syria demonstrate the toughness and correctness of the policies of Obama.  You didn’t know that, did you?

I guess we needed a few days before we were let in on the secret, or perhaps to allow the spin doctors to come up with a story.

One example is provided by Jeffrey Goldberg at Bloomberg, in a commentary entitled “From Iran to Syria, Obama's Toughness Is Paying Off.”

There is one main reason why Iran is making conciliatory noises about its relationship with the U.S. and about the future of its nuclear program, and there is one main reason why Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian dictator, is signaling his intention to give up his stockpiles of chemical weapons.

The reason: President Barack Obama's toughness.

He goes all neocon after this; none of this very relevant to my point.

Off the top of my head, the events regarding Syria occurred in this order:

1)      There was a reported gas attack.

2)      Obama said the US was going to send in the missiles.

3)      France said ‘We’re in.”

4)      The British Parliament said “We’re not.”

5)      Most other “allies” declined to participate.

6)      Obama started getting nervous, standing on the ledge with only the French government behind him.

7)      Obama decided to hide behind Congress.

8)      The people of the US sent a very clear message: “Don’t count us in.”

9)      Sadly, no vote was taken – leadership in Congress knew it would be thumbs down.

10)   Obama, after seeing his cause was hopeless, was looking for a lifeline.

11)   Putin saved him.

That’s pretty much it.

Was it all part of Obama’s plan?  Was this his way of demonstrating “toughness”?

Let’s play along – say it was the plan.  What did it demonstrate?

The world saw that it could call the bully out and win.  If Obama was bluffing, this was a dangerous lesson to teach other world-powers: did Obama want to draw Putin into a position of making even bigger challenges in the future only as a pretext to a big showdown?

Let’s hope not, as this will lead to even greater calamity in the future.

If this was a blunder on Obama’s part, I keep in the back of my mind that such major blunders don’t normally occur, and rarely, if ever, so publicly. 

However, my gut still tells me the global elite power game has seen a pretty significant inflection point.  The tool used by the elite to exert global control is losing its capability (this is certain, with or without Syria), and there is no replacement tool. 

This would suggest that Obama blundered.  The fact that apologists like Goldberg are coming out and trying to get us to believe the unbelievable – that up is down and day is night – perhaps adds a bit of support to this view.