Obama War in Iraq

Like Gorbachev, Obama and much of the foreign policy establishment in Washington seem to cling to the fantasy that the U.S. can muddle through towards victory in Afghanistan.

The Obama people's muscular policies are cast in the certainties and self-righteousness that have become the theme music to all we do. The volume grows in proportion to the decline in our ability to accomplish anything of value in the world. Whistling past the graveyard of our failures, we obsessively return to the tunes we sang with lusty, and more innocent, self-confidence as a younger nation. Our foreign policy elite have not the mind, the mentality nor the skills to imagine it otherwise. The irony of our deeply-troubled, financially-strapped nation presuming to arrange the affairs of everybody else on the planet escapes them.

Obama's refusal to criticize the U.S. attack on Syria raises the prospect that rather than pursue the diplomatic route, he will instead "pick up where the Bush Administration has now ended."