CNN’s Ward: ‘Reluctance’ On Part of the Obama Administration To ‘Call It As You See It’ In Foreign Affairs

During CNN’s coverage of President Obama’s address before the UN on Tuesday, CNN Senior International Correspondent Clarissa Ward stated that “there has been a reluctance on the part of his administration to kind of roll up their sleeves, and hold your nose, and plunge in and call it as you see it.”

Ward stated that the Syrian ceasefire had gone away and was a “disaster.” She added that the president “sees things in such almost detached intellectual terms. That is perhaps why there has been a reluctance on the part of his administration to kind of roll up their sleeves, and hold your nose, and plunge in and call it as you see it. And that is the critique that has always been of President Obama when it comes to his foreign policy, and particularly in the Middle East, and particularly, obviously, in Syria, where he’s shown a real reluctance to get involved. And so, it was interesting to hear that tone. This was less about, look what we’ve done, and look what we’ve achieved. This was more about, well, when you can look at the world as a whole, and you can understand the roots of these problems, we see that there’s very little America can actually do about them, and we all have to work together in a multilateral diplomatic capacity. There was almost, on the one hand, a very optimistic sense, but on the other hand, an almost sense of defeatism, Wolf.”

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