The Right’s Sickening Syria Spin

By Michael Tomasky. Today's 'recommended read'.

I don’t know about you, but I’m not very interested in being lectured that Bashar al-Assad has no real intention of giving up his chemical weapons by the very same people who a decade ago were pushing this country into war—and having the deranged gall to call the rest of us unpatriotic—on the argument that there was no possible way a monster like Saddam Hussein had given up his chemical weapons. Barack Obama has been forced to spend about 70 percent of his presidential energies trying to repair crises foreign and domestic that these people created, and forced to do so against their iron opposition on all fronts; and now that he’s achieved a diplomatic breakthrough, they have the audacity to argue that he sold America out to Vladimir Putin? It’s staggering and sickening.
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The second question concerns Assad. Conservatives are now asserting that this deal means Assad has gotten away with it; that he used chemical weapons and will now pay no price. What does that even mean? If he even partly or mostly honors the terms of the deal, he’s paid a price. I suppose the critics really mean that Assad paid no military price, and strictly speaking that’s true. But do these critics really think Assad is sitting in Damascus laughing? He was afraid the world’s largest and best military was going to bomb him. And I’d bet he knows all too clearly that if he uses them again, he will be bombed. If Assad is mad enough to use them again, Obama won’t mess with Congress or even Russia. He’ll be credited by most observers—except America’s enemies and the Republican Party; food for thought there (my em)—for having shown restraint the first time, and more people will agree at that point that Assad must be punished
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What Obama has screwed up on Syria is process stuff. He’s changed his mind. That’s unforgivable, in the Washington Village. It shows no “resolve.” Well, Bush showed resolve. I’ll give him that. And as he dragged us into a full-out war premised on lies that were crafted to shift an originally skeptical public sentiment in his favor, the pundits largely applauded. Obama has spoken honestly to the American people, obeyed their strong majority view, and secured a deal that for the moment represents the outer limits of the possibility of doing good in Syria. The brickbats thrown by the very people who turned the world against us are not only hard to take seriously, they’re a moral offense.

In related news:

McCain feels a ‘little lonely’ because nobody wants to attack Syria

Suck it, Grampa Walnuts. It must be an awful feeling to wave your pistol around, holler "follow me!", go over the top and get halfway across no-man's-land, turn to check on your devoted troops and [crickets]. The devoted troops are back in the trench divvying up your liquor ration and dry socks. Heh.