I did not see that coming. Nor did the president himself, evidently; according to Mr. Chuck Todd of the analogue media,
What I didn't get, I think, was the degree to which President Obama appreciates the difference between a Tough Decision (where the situation apparently requires you to make a decision you know to be wrong) and a difficult one (where no one option among those available solves the problem). One of the problems with the option he was about to choose was that it looked like a classically Tough Decision: aiming at demonstrating his own personal toughness rather than stopping the murder in Syria (which it is very unlikely to do). Kicking it to Congress—inviting the whole population into the process—gives us a chance to step back and think about Syria itself.
And it's by no means over. A lot of people assume that the House cannot pass an authorization to use force; I'm very far from sure of that, but what I'm sure of is that Obama is prepared for either outcome. In the meantime he has supported democracy, gobsmacked the Republicans into showing their divisions and the soi-disant left of the emoprogs into showing their rightism, and added weeks to the negotiation framework (including back-channel discussions with Iran which would have been destroyed by the bombing campaign that was scheduled for this weekend). And the number of Syrians killed while we are waiting for the Congress to do whatever it's going to do will be horrible, but no different from the number that would have been killed had our excursion taken place. Only we won't have killed any of them ourselves.
only hours after Kerry called Syrian President Bashar al-Assad "a thug and a murderer" and accused his regime of using chemical weapons to kill 1,429 people, Obama changed his mind as he walked across the South Lawn with Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, the officials said.Love that Woodwardian detail. Were they chatting about the weather, you think, or maybe maintaining a pregnant silence?
What I didn't get, I think, was the degree to which President Obama appreciates the difference between a Tough Decision (where the situation apparently requires you to make a decision you know to be wrong) and a difficult one (where no one option among those available solves the problem). One of the problems with the option he was about to choose was that it looked like a classically Tough Decision: aiming at demonstrating his own personal toughness rather than stopping the murder in Syria (which it is very unlikely to do). Kicking it to Congress—inviting the whole population into the process—gives us a chance to step back and think about Syria itself.
And it's by no means over. A lot of people assume that the House cannot pass an authorization to use force; I'm very far from sure of that, but what I'm sure of is that Obama is prepared for either outcome. In the meantime he has supported democracy, gobsmacked the Republicans into showing their divisions and the soi-disant left of the emoprogs into showing their rightism, and added weeks to the negotiation framework (including back-channel discussions with Iran which would have been destroyed by the bombing campaign that was scheduled for this weekend). And the number of Syrians killed while we are waiting for the Congress to do whatever it's going to do will be horrible, but no different from the number that would have been killed had our excursion taken place. Only we won't have killed any of them ourselves.
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