“PEACE IN OR TIME”

“PEACE IN OR TIME”
Neville Chamberlin. 1937 Munich
Baack Obama, 2nd Inaugural 2013

AS NOBEL PEACE PRIZE WINNER TRAVELS, HE LEAVES CONGRESS TO ARGUE ABOUT THE MESS HE MADE ABOUT IRAQ
AUSTIN BAY: Obama’s Smart Diplomacy: Keystone Kops, Emily Litella and Kabuki. “Obama promised to restore America’s international reputation. Has he?” Hey, he’s trying his best.
Posted at 8:04 am by Glenn Reynolds  
DON’T BE CRITICIZING PRESIDENT OBAMA: “He’s trying his best.” This from his defenders.
THIS MESS IS HIS BEST!

UH, REALLY? Obama on Syria: ‘I didn’t set a red line’ … ‘My credibility is not on the line.’ “That claim directly contradicts Obama’s remarks in August of last year, when he announced his ‘red line’ for action in Syria during a White House press conference.”

Of course, as several wags on Twitter are noting, you can’t “put on the line” what does not exist. . . .
UPDATE: “President Pass-The-Buck.”
ANOTHER UPDATE: Obama on the ‘red line’: I didn’t draw that. Somebody else made that happen.
OUCH: Conan: Syria’s Assad called Pres Obama “weak.” Obama was so angry he plans to ask Congress for permission to think up a good comeback.

UPDATE: Rand Paul’s Syria Amendment Throws Obama’s Words Back In His Face. “The amendment quotes from a response Obama gave The Boston Globe back in 2007 as a Senator, in which Obama said that ‘the President does not have the power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.’”

THE COUNTRY’S IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: Debbie Wasserman Schultz says ‘dozens’ of countries stand with US on Syria, can’t name them.

COLBERT KING:” Obama’s Pathetic Syria Strategy. “He is only seeking buy-in from Capitol Hill because of public pressure to do so, not because he reached that conclusion on his own, either in anticipation of a serious Assad regime challenge or as part of a larger administration strategy for dealing with Syria and its enablers in the region. Obama’s decision was wholly reactive. That’s not reassuring behavior from a superpower’s commander in chief.”

And Barack Obama, who in his first term was known as the vanquisher of Osama bin Laden, could come out of his second looking more like Neville Chamberlain.

I don’t want to overstate things. Bashar al-Assad, a tinpot dictator who is fighting only for his own survival, is no Hitler. He’s not set to overrun an entire continent. And the “lessons of Munich” and the dangers of appeasement are generally overdrawn. But, after all, it was Secretary of State John Kerry who lumped Assad with the Fuehrer on the talk shows Sunday, saying that he “now joins the list of Adolf Hitler and Saddam Hussein [who] have used these weapons in time of war.” (Technically, Hitler’s only use of gas was not on the battlefield but to kill millions in extermination camps.)

These are also the clear implications of the president’s own words.
It was either an embarrassing slip, or a frightening revelation of the president’s true worldview. Either way, the words “peace in our time,” made infamous by British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain as he promised an illusory peace with Adolf Hitler in 1938, should never have been in President Barack Obama’s second inaugural address. Yet they were, and went virtually unnoticed until caught by conservatives on social media.

The phrase appeared in a passage on foreign policy, in which the president pledged to defend the nation while resolving differences peacefully [emphasis added]:

And we must be a source of hope to the poor, the sick, the marginalized, the victims of prejudice–not out of mere charity, but because peace in our time requires the constant advance of those principles that our common creed describes: tolerance and opportunity; human dignity and justice.”