An Eye To The Future

"Once you come to Congress and ask for permission, and they deny it and then you do it anyway, that is pretty outrageous in anybody's mind. I think it would really cost him if he did it.
He's been a lame duck since election night because the Republicans retained control of the house.
"And this is not the old-time Republican party where you had a lot of moderates who would work with a Democratic president. I don't think he could get a Mother's Day resolution passed.
"I may not like the particulars of this case, but this is the way our system is supposed to work, unless it's a true military emergency -- we've been attacked or something like that. This was not in that category. I'm glad he did it, even though it could easily blow up in his face.
"What's the next president going to do? He's going to look back to this and say, 'Do I want to go through that? No, I'll just launch a few cruise missile strikes, and in two weeks everyone will have forgotten'."
Larry Sabato, director, University of Virginia Center for Politics

"The president's not interested in the politics of this. The president's interested in making sure our national security is protected."
White House chief of staff Denis McDonough

Looks as though President Obama is in a kind of character freefall. The man who could do no wrong, the man who so excited the American electorate that they forgot all about the politics of colour and division and mistrust, the man who so lit up the expectations of the international community that all applauded when he was made a Noble Laureate on the basis of future expectations, not any measure of accomplishment, has managed to step into the mire of cowpies.

A pro-Assad protester near the US embassy in Beirut burns a poster superimposing Barack Obama on former President George Bush

He has promised with the might that stands behind him as Commander in Chief of the most powerful nation on Earth to exact a disciplinary measure on the callous disregard for humanity displayed by a Middle Eastern despot. There's a first time for everything. But Bashar al-Assad has exhausted the patience of everyone but his staunchest allies who have managed not to flinch at his growing record of atrocities committed against his own, but not quite his own.

Asking Congress for approval for an act that has already reached the public ear and expectation is a mite unexpected. But this is a man who prefers his conscience not to adapt to the certainty of committing an act of war. Truman, Reagan and Clinton may have taken it upon themselves to do just that, spontaneously and without seeking the approval of Congress, but he is not of their ilk or inclination. If there is blame, it will blemish his already-somewhat-tarnished legacy and that is quite simply unsupportable.

President Obama has no wish for the future to register its stern admonishment against his record, naming a potential cataclysm of the entire Middle East imploding in an agony of self-immolation resulting from his casual rhetoric of intervention, with the nomenclature to describe the resulting chaos as "Obama's War". He may offer an open hand of cooperation to an uncooperative Iran unflinching as Iran slaps it away, but the very contemplation of a Nobel Peace Prize winner owning a war is unthinkable to a man of his calibre.

A general view shows a heavily damaged street in Syria's eastern town of Deir Ezzor on August 26, 2013.

His parents would never have approved; they would turn in their graves, so too his grandparents and his little sister as well. "Those who insist on beginning a war are about to start a fire that will take over the entire region", promised Iranian foreign Minister Javad Zarif. And President Obama is listening, carefully, with an eye to the future.