Danielle Pletka: "Aimless Syria Policy, Aimless President"

Pletka. A great friend of Lebanon's Cedarites ...seems to be diagnosing a rudderless US, more than an 'aimless President'. The Crown Jewel? 'W'!

"I started to write this post about Syria, and realized there’s a larger truth behind the problem of the Obama administration’s Syria policy. There’s simply no understanding a government without a compass. It is unpredictable, confused, and contradictory. Officials say one thing: “Many of the members of Congress of both parties who have gone to Syria in recent months have said they believe [Assad’s] a reformer”… and then they say another: “President Assad is not indispensable and we have absolutely nothing invested in him remaining in power.”  One of them says something else: “President Assad now has a choice: he can lead that transition or get out of the way,” and then contradicts that: “I think that increasingly you’re seeing President Assad lose legitimacy in the eyes of his people.”
What happens when the leader of the free world flies by the seat of his pants? No one has a clue what’s going on. Congress is bewildered by a president who surges into Afghanistan and then precipitously draws down before achieving the goals he laid out. Everyone is flummoxed when the president announces we are out of Iraq and then his SecDef insists that the Iraqis need to engrave us an invitation to stay. The American public has no clue what the administration is up to in Libya when the president apparently wants Qadhafi gone, but not so much that he’ll quickly recognize the opposition or provide aid. Ditto for Syria.
And if the American Congress and the American people can’t figure out what principles and policies are guiding Obama and his team, is it any wonder that the world is left staring and gaping as U.S. officials jump hither and yon, leavening criticism with adulation, calls for transition with accommodation, and rhetorical bursts with long stretches of silence? You can’t lead if you don’t know where you’re going."