Uncommon Commentary #366: Obama Doesn't Make de Grade

Previously demanding military action for what he said to be the necessary purpose of "degrading" and "punishing" the Assad regime over its alleged use of chemical weapons on 21 August, President Obombast now says that he'll ask Congress to delay the potential missile-strikes for the sake of the proposal, accepted by Syria, to place that country's poison-gas arsenal under "international control"; on Monday, he justified this latest deviation in his "policy" toward Syria by saying that he "fervently" hoped for peace and that a diplomatic solution is "overwhelmingly my preference."  But, wait a minute: Even if this alternate option should actually result in the dismantling of Syria's (already-used) chemical weaponry, how will it "degrade" and "punish" the Assad government for what Obama's administration contends was an intolerable crossing of the "red line"?  From the outset, I've considered prospective US intervention in the Syrian civil war to be madness, and so the purpose of this uncommon commentary is not to argue that Obama is wrong to retreat from his tough talk; rather, it is to note that his reaction to this development provides further evidence that our president is a clown whose bluster means nothing.  In the title of this posting, I made a play on the word "degrade"; I could make another by saying that Obama's approach to foreign relations rates a "D-grade", but the truth is that it deserves nothing higher than an "F".