FAREED ZAKARIA: Last March, President Obama spoke off-the- cuff about how Syria’s use of chemical weapons would be a game changer. It has turned out to be, except not quite in the sense that he meant. It's been an event that has confused and confounded the Obama administration. Whatever your views on the larger issues, it's hard not to conclude that the administration's handling of Syria over the last year has been a case study in how not to do foreign policy.
So he announced just over two years ago that President Bashar al-Assad of Syria had to go. Now a pundit can engage in grandiose rhetoric. The President of the United States should make declarations like that only if he has a strategy to actually achieve it. He did not.
In truth, Obama and many others miscalculated...
Then, just about a year ago, came... remarks about a red line on chemical weapons, insufficiently thought through but now publicly stated and definitive. Since then, American foreign policy towards Syria has largely been concerned about ensuring that Obama’s threat does not seem empty.
After all, what American national interest is being followed? ...the United Nations and other international organizations - do not support this action. The United States plus France and Turkey cannot be considered the embodiment of international law and global public opinion.
The nature of the strike we are told will be short and symbolic - a shot across the bow in the midst of a civil war in which both sides are in a high-stakes struggle for survival, does anyone think this will make any difference?
And then the strangest twist - an unplanned last-minute appeal to Congress, paving the way for further delay, weakening momentum, erasing what little surprise existed, and setting the stage for a potential defeat at home.
...the manner in which the Obama administration has first created and then mismanaged this crisis will cast a long shadow on America’s role in the world.
