Not a Consummate Diplomat

When our President — deftly I thought -sidestepped from following through on his (rash) "red line" commitment on Syria, taking cover with David Cameron's recourse to Parliament, it seemed to me a wise move at the time. Getting involved again militarily, this time in Syria — a mosaic country created by the British and the French — seemed fraught with unanticipated consequences, given the country's early history of coups and hangings. (Full disclosure: in 1961, I was assigned to be the CIA's Chief of Base, Damascus the following year, but the alliance against nature of Syria and Egypt fell apart and with it the posting.)

Now it is several years after the "red line" was not honored, and the picture doesn't look so rosy. Vladimir Putin has stepped in where Barack Obama hesitated to tread. If the U.S. had flooded the sky over Syria with aircraft at the time, one wonders whether Putin would later have intervened in Syria with such massiveness. Above all, the upshot in Syria is that it has left the impression that the American President is weak.

I still greatly admire President Obama, who has made the right call on so many issues. But he is a little too quick on the uptake, too quick to leap to the truth, and manifestly not a diplomat with the guile of HAK, FDR, or even RN.