Obama's incoherent Syrian policy

Dan McLaughlin:

The plans being floated by President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry for a wildly unpopular military intervention in Syria are incoherent on any number of levels. Rather than identify an enemy and seek the enemy’s defeat, the essential requirement for using military force, the Administration is unwilling to declare the toppling of the Assad regime as a goal – despiteObama’s own proclamation two years ago this month that “[f]or the sake of the Syrian people, the time has come for President Assad to step aside.” Instead, according to one unnamed “U.S. official” quoted by the LA Times, the Administration wants a military strike “just muscular enough not to get mocked.” Churchillian, this is not.

Nor is it in line with what Obama, Biden and Kerry used to claim to believe. Once upon a time,Obama’s expressed willingness to meet with leaders like Assad made him popular in Syria. Then-Senator Obama argued in the 2008 campaign that “[t]he President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation” (Senator Biden agreed); now, as in Libya, Obama has no interest in asking for Congressional approval. Obama and Kerry once venerated the need to get UN and international approval for the use of force; now, Kerry’s spokesman says of the UN Security Council, where both Russia and China are expected to oppose military strikes,“[w]e cannot be held up in responding by Russia’s intransigence.” Obama is apparently gunshy of even explaining himself: one of his reliable proxies at Politico asks, “[i]s POTUS going to address the nation directly before embarking on military action in Syria? Many of his aides think it’s a passé tactic.”

(UPDATE: Here’s more from Obama in 2007 sounding a very different note on Syria, and John Kerry cozying up to Assad as recently as 2011-2012).
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There is much more.

It is the incoherence of the scheme that is so discouraging.  It will not deter Assad or others and it will waste a lot of Tomahawk Cruise Missiles.  Punitive strikes have a long history of being ineffective.