{"id":6433,"date":"2013-09-10T09:55:36","date_gmt":"2013-09-10T16:55:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=6433"},"modified":"2013-09-10T09:56:19","modified_gmt":"2013-09-10T16:56:19","slug":"now-what-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/now-what-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Now What?"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0NRO’s The Corner<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

\"ViaEveryone can agree that Obama\u2019s handling of the crisis has been puerile, and that there now are only the proverbial bad and worse options\u2014the \u00a0result being not whether the U.S. loses credibility, but only how much and for how long. So what comes next?<\/p>\n

At this point, the president would do far better to respect the probable \u201cno\u201d vote from the Congress (at least from the House), curb the demagoguing, keep quiet, put the preemptive attack on hold, and announce only that the \u201cU.S. reserves all options to act when and if it sees fit\u201d\u2014and leave it at that. For once, let our enemies ponder our silence rather than be unimpressed by our verbosity. \u00a0If we believe there is a viable pro-Western Syrian Free Army that can be distinguished from the anti-Western militias, and think that it can win, and trust that it would be better than Assad in protecting minorities threatened by Islamists, then by all means let us up our aid and attention.<\/p>\n

And it may be likely, as in the case of the faux red line, that Assad will seek to test the U.S., perhaps in concert with his Iranian and Hezbollah allies. If and when those provocations pose an imminent threat to U.S. security, then the president can act with the full support of the American people and Congress, perhaps even more so, once he has shown wisdom in avoiding, at the eleventh hour, his present miasma. He could use the present lull to craft a coalition of our allies, prep and inform Congress to brace for \u00a0our enemies\u2019\u00a0possible full-throttle challenge to the U.S., and prepare a response that would meet constitutional and national-security requirements\u2014and win public support. In other words,\u00a0right\u00a0now we could forge a strategy for impending contingencies that we never had in Libya or Syria\u2014predicated on examining what are our aims in using deadly force, what are we willing to pay to achieve them, and what is the ultimate result we could live with?<\/p>\n

Obama should accept his back-down as a loss of face, and never do such a dangerous thing again (fake red lines, indecision, policy reversals, pontification and sermonizing, blame-gaming, garbled aims and means, etc.), but not see the misstep as fatal to the U.S.\u00a0Like Kennedy after Vienna, let him prepare now for the worst, for, as was the case with an embarrassed Kennedy at that summit (\u201cHe beat the hell out of me. . . . He savaged me\u201d), our next encounter could come quite quickly and won\u2019t be about whether killing some people with Tomahawks restores Obama\u2019s fides, but rather over something far greater and more dangerous.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0NRO’s The Corner Everyone can agree that Obama\u2019s handling of the crisis has been puerile, and that there now are only the proverbial bad and worse options\u2014the \u00a0result being not whether the U.S. loses credibility, but only how much and for how long. So what comes next?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[846,196],"tags":[12,210,317,1048,1065,1041],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-1FL","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":6483,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/syria-in-a-nutshell\/","url_meta":{"origin":6433,"position":0},"title":"Syria in a Nutshell","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 13, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0NRO's The Corner\u00a0 We are contemplating going to war in Syria to help the opposition a lot and to hurt Assad some, or to help the opposition some and hurt Assad a lot, or to hurt Assad some and help the opposition some, or to force\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Syria"","block_context":{"text":"Syria","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/syria\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6442,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/syrian-knowns-and-unknowns\/","url_meta":{"origin":6433,"position":1},"title":"Syrian Knowns and Unknowns","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 10, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0PJ Media \u00a0 1)\u00a0Red lines:\u00a0Does anyone believe we would be on the eve of a war with Syria had not Barack Obama on two occasions \u2014 echoed on two others by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton \u2014\u00a0warned Bashar Assad of red lines\u00a0surrounding the use of WMD?\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Syria"","block_context":{"text":"Syria","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/syria\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/syria-war_protestor_9-8-13-2-200x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":6437,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obamas-farce\/","url_meta":{"origin":6433,"position":2},"title":"Obama’s Farce","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 10, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"He sold his plan for bombing Syria on flawed political assumptions. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0National Review Online \u00a0 To support the president\u2019s enforcement of his red line in Syria requires suspensions of disbelief. Here are several. I wish it were not true, but there is scant evidence that the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Syria"","block_context":{"text":"Syria","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/syria\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/5516984495_a7e9026136-300x225.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":6411,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obama-indicts-obama\/","url_meta":{"origin":6433,"position":3},"title":"Obama Indicts Obama","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 3, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0PJ Media One of the problems that Barack Obama has in mounting an attack against the Assad regime is that the gambit violates every argument Barack Obama used against the Bush administration to establish his own anti-war candidacy. The hypocrisy is so stunning that it infuriates\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Commentary"","block_context":{"text":"Commentary","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/commentary-obama-administration\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6389,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/what-is-the-syria-plan\/","url_meta":{"origin":6433,"position":4},"title":"What Is the Syria Plan?","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 28, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0NRO's The Corner We are on the verge of a war with Syria. Yet I don\u2019t think the administration has as of yet articulated what its aims are and thus is confused about the means of obtaining them. Is the point of the impending military action\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Syria"","block_context":{"text":"Syria","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/syria\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6429,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/if-it-wasnt-syria-it-would-have-been-something-else\/","url_meta":{"origin":6433,"position":5},"title":"If It Wasn’t Syria, It Would Have Been Something Else","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 6, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0NRO's The Corner It is very\u00a0possible that the president will not obtain a join authorization to bomb Syria; if he chooses to go ahead and attack anyway, Obama will incite a constitutional crisis\u2014the first time in history that a president has decided to go to war\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Syria"","block_context":{"text":"Syria","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/syria\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6433"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6433"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6433\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6436,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6433\/revisions\/6436"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}