The Obama administration spent its years routinely stating that the arc of history bent toward justice, that human rights violations violated the world’s sensibilities, and that unlike cowboy-esque Republicans, Democrats would ensure that the world remained safe from the predations of monsters like Syrian dictator Bashar Assad. In fact, President Obama issued a “red line,” and threatened action against Assad if Assad used chemical weapons against his own people. When Assad did just that, Obama hemmed and hawed and then finally handed over the situation to Russia’s Vladimir Putin, who ensured that Assad stayed in power, and allowed Assad to retain his chemical weapons.
Meanwhile, the Obama administration went around bragging that their magical Russian deal had actually disarmed the dictator. Don’t believe me? Believe these Democratic officials, including Obama himself, in this video compiled by the Free Beacon:
National Security Advisor Susan Rice agreed:
So did Secretary of State John Kerry, who said in 2014, “We struck a deal where we got 100 percent of the chemical weapons out.” Politifact, that left-wing ass-covering site, declared, “It was an ambitious goal, particularly in the middle of a civil war. And in large measure, it was met.” They declared Kerry’s statement “mostly true.”
Pod Save America co-host and former Obama van driver Tommy Vietor tweeted in 2013:
Now, of course, he’s changed his tune:
Well, then, Tommy. Who handed Trump that mess?
The Obama administration’s Syrian policy was utterly feckless in every conceivable way. And their willingness to hand over Syria to Russia and Iran was worse than feckless: it turned the country into a global tinderbox concerning major powers, rather than merely the site of anti-humanitarian evil. Syria is Obama’s Middle East legacy. And there’s no way for his team to escape that culpability.
