CONTRARY

So Obama's accused of being "indecisive" when he decides he doesn't have enough support for an attack on Assad's chemical weapons capabilities and then calls Boner's bluff and takes it to Congress. This is the man who risked his presidency and any chance for a second term on a risky attempt to get Bin Laden the same night he was making jokes at that press dinner. If that had failed he'd have been villified by the same people now calling him indecisive.

(By the way I have plenty of complaints about Obama, just don't like jive attacks on him, or anyone for that matter.)

Then Putin (and whoever runs Assad) calls Kerry's bluff and gets Assad to agree to give up his chemical weapons (maybe, we'll see, etc.) Then the same ones calling Obama indecisive attack Kerry for making a gaff that what? might lead to less death and destruction. Bad Kerry.

Then Obama makes a speech tonight (well, technically last night) explaining his thinking on all this and answering a lot of his critics and others' questioning, adroitly I thought laying out why chemical weapons differs from other weapons that have killed more people in Syria. He mentions WWI and the gas used in the trenches that led to the banning of chemical weapons and even more emphatically after Hitler's use of gas in the ovens.

And how the international community, meaning most countries, signed the agreement that chemical weapons were a no no, but if Assad gets away with it, others may figure they can too and the whole worldwide (almost) ban will disintegrate over time and bam someone's using chemical weapons on our military and then on us. Only he explained it much better.

So the first thing I notice on most of the channels after his speech are people questioning why chemical weapons are such a big deal we have to threaten military reprisal when over a hundred thousand people have died in Syria from conventional weapons. Well, hello, I'm sure Obama, or at least most liberals would love to see conventional weapons banned too (like assault rifles and multi-bullet magazines etc.) but as bad as they are chemical weapons (and it goes without saying nuclear weapons) are worse.

The world is actually a lot less warlike than it was when I was a boy, despite the news of terrible armed conflicts here and there, and hopefully it will become even less so. But if we let chemical weapons be used without any attempt to stop it being done again in Syria or spreading to other countries, we're gonna be way sorry, or our kids and grandkids will.

So, Obama called Boner's bluff and now he's calling Putin's (and Assad's handlers) while still putting a limited response (he explained that well too, yet commentators made it seem like that's impossible, though it's been done before in Kosovo etc. and Obama said he wasn't even going to do anything as sustained as that) on the table. It might work. Like the Bin Laden attack. And like that, if it doesn't he'll be attacked and if it does he'll still be attacked. Guy can't win (except elections).