President Obama appeared on ABC’s This Week to defend his administration’s incoherent Syrian policy, stating that his efforts have achieved their desired results, even if those results were achieved in non-stylish fashion.
“I think that folks here in Washington like to grade on style. And so had we rolled out something that was very smooth and disciplined and linear, they would have graded it well, even if it was a disastrous policy. We know that, because that’s exactly how they graded the Iraq war,” Obama stated, slapping at his predecessor George W. Bush once again.
“I’m much more concerned about getting the policy right,” Obama continued, setting up a false dichotomy. “As a consequence of the steps that we’ve taken over the last two weeks to three weeks, we now have a situation in which Syria has acknowledged it has chemical weapons, has said it’s willing to join the convention on chemical weapons, and Russia, its primary sponsor, has said that it will pressure Syria to reach that agreement. That’s my goal. And if that goal is achieved, then it sounds to me like we did something right.”
Obama’s language as to his “goal” – that he wants Russia to join the chemical weapons convention – is a major shift from his prior stated goal of seeing all of Syria’s weapons turned over to the international community, and the goal before that of seeing the Assad regime deposed.
Ben Shapiro is Editor-At-Large of Breitbart News and author of the New York Times bestseller “Bullies: How the Left’s Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences America” (Threshold Editions, January 8, 2013).
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