Obama and the Middle East; Rhetoric Running on Empty

Victor Davis Hanson   "The latest disclosure — and the most grave — of the Assad regime’s supposed deployments of chemical weapons puts the West in general and the U.S. in particular in an untenable position."
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"The president’s rhetorical quiver is empty. After tough talk about boots on the ground and the good war in Afghanistan, deadlines to Iran, and redlines to Syria, all of which proved sorta/kinda pipe dreams, there are no more “make no mistake about/let me be perfectly clear/game-changer/I’m not kidding” arrows. Assad knows that, and the world knows it as well. In other words, another Obama speech will earn guffaws."
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"All of the above hypotheticals and diplomatic nuances would not matter to a Churchill, Truman, or Reagan. They would size up the humanitarian crisis, grasp the strategic consequences of legitimizing the use of WMD, weigh the prior rhetorical investment of the U.S. in warning against what apparently is now happening, and craft an air strategy that might stop the violence without pulling U.S. ground troops into the mess — and act with dispatch and moral confidence.
"And now? Enough said."