The Obama administration’s brilliant strategy to keep us out of Syria

[pokerfan]

Maybe it is n-dimensional chess after all...

Privately, Hill aides joke that everything is going exactly to President Obama’s plan. It’s just that that plan is to stay far, far away from Syria.

This is the (tongue-in-cheek) 12-dimensional chess interpretation of the Obama administration’s Syria strategy. Boxed in by red-line rhetoric and the Sunday show warriors, the Obama administration needed to somehow mobilize the opposition to war in Syria. It did that by “fumbling” the roll-out terribly.

The arguments were lengthy and unclear. The White House expressly admitted that their strikes wouldn’t save Syrian lives or topple Assad or making anything better in any way, and they were instead asking Americans to bomb Syria in order to enforce abstract international norms of warfare. It would be the first military action in American history that wasn’t meant to save lives or win a war but to slightly change the mix of arms a dictator was using to slaughter his population.

All this was helpful in creating opposition. But then Obama turned on a dime and decided to go to Congress at the last minute, making his administration look indecisive and fearful of shouldering the blame for this unpopular intervention, putting the decision in the hands of a body famous for being unable to make decisions, giving the argument for strikes more time to lose support, and giving an American public that opposes intervention in Syria more time and venues to be heard.

More: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/09/04/wonkbook-the-obama-administrations-brilliant-strategy-to-keep-us-out-of-syria/?wprss=rss_ezra-klein&clsrd

[PoliticAverse]

1. The push the Administration is doing to get votes for the resolution refutes this thesis. n/t

[pokerfan]

2. Hence the phrase, "tongue in cheek."

Which I quoted but probably should have highlighted.

[indepat]

3. We'll all see

[PoliticAverse]

4. I thought your original was fine, but many people (myself included) do believe that...

'Many a true word is spoken in jest' or in other words, sometimes people are being serious even
when they aren't...