The comments below are follow-up to "zero dark thirty" posted on (Harvey) Blume's Blog.
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The last time this "political archetype" manifested, Reagan and Saddam became bosom buddies. Dutch even donated the materials for Saddam to make chemical weapons.
The upshot? Both Iraq and Iran were incapacitated by perpetual stalemate.
It now surpasses irony that "Iran won the Iraq War."
Why?
Because Smirk was stupid enough to eliminate Saddam, who, despite his penchant for butchery, was the most modernizing force in Greater Arabee.
Saddam was, for example, the best thing that ever happened to women in the Arab Middle East. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1086691/posts
Obama may seem a hapless fence-sitter now, but in Syria fence-sitting is the best possible position because it insures prolongation of the Alawite-Rebel stalemate, each side having already removed one testicle from the other, and neither eager to lose their diminished manhood altogether.
Gradually, Assad and the Alawites will consolidate power in "Greater Damascus" and the rebels will establish a number of de facto principalities. In any event, by biding time, the Syrian crisis stays within "reasonable" bounds, or at least what passes for "reason" in the Sunni-Shia Thirty Years War.
Behind it all, Assad knows that any future deployment of poison gas will prompt Obama to jam a drone up his ass. Assad may be politically crazed but he is personally pragmatic, fully aware that Obama got Osama and will not hesitate to fry the opthalmologist if he uses WMD again.
Ironically it would work to Obama's advantage if Assad tried to keep poison gas since the resulting muddle would prolong the diplomatic crisis. Should this congealed crisis last another seven years, Hillary will be elected not once but twice, and in this prolonged period of Democratic dominance, Obamacare will become a "success" (thus discrediting the GOP's supposedly "existential" opposition); the "Party of Angry Old White Guys" dies off; and the United States permanently opens its door to the same sort of socialized Capitalism prevalent in Europe.
Thus, Obama accomplishes complete partisan success.
The only question in all this is whether Hillary appoints Obama to the Supreme Court. Time will tell.