The people going on about winning and losing seem to forget that there is no situation here where Obama could possibly win, unless others choose to cooperate.
Even if he had never made the "red line" comment, his choices were to ignore what is going on there or get involved, and neither would win anything.
Americans have a difficult time accepting that there are situations they cannot "win".
Let's ask ourselves with the benefit of hindsight how could Obama have handled this better?
For one thing, I don't believe that his initial 'red line" comment a year ago or so locked him into anything. One of his biggest mistakes was to double down on it and threaten to unilaterally bomb Syria.
If called out on that initial red line comment you've got a lot of good reasons to slow play it:
1. There have been numerous other chem weapon attacks, many of which are claimed to have been down by the rebels. Why should we bomb Assad if the rebels did it or are doing it too?
2. Investigate. There was no need to jump the gun. Let the UN investigate that chem attack and the others. There's enough doubt about the attack that makes an investigation reasonable.
3. The situation on the ground has grown steadily worse for the FSA (and the world) as they are displaced by AQ type groups. A year, or 18 months ago - whenever the red line comment was first made - this wasn't the case. We need to be careful a bombing doesn't tip this into the AQ types favor. (Of course it's not clear that Obama didn't actually want to do that.)
4. Diplomatic: Consult and build consensus. Quiet diplomacy carried out in the background before making bellicose statements could have been all the difference here I think. What are European leaders thinking? Do they have alternate ideas of how to respond to this? What about their public opinion polls?
5. Congress: Same as above. Why start out defiant instead of doing what past President's seem to have done - quietly consult with the leaders in the House and Senate? No, he choose to tell Congress to 'F' itself, claim he needs no consultation or vote. Then flip-flops, then decides to add childishly that he doesn't have to follow their vote. WTH?
Multiple missteps creating/compounding the problem.
Had Obama done 4 and 5 he never would have gotten way out on the 'bombing limb' then had to (embarrassingly) crawl back
And I think there was (at least) one other error - I think the disarm Syria option had been placed on the table well before but Obama, perhaps rightly so, had refused it. I think had he consulted instead of acting unilaterally he wouldn't have been pushed into something he thought a bad idea. And it may be a bad idea. Just about everyone out there who is advertised as some kind of expert on the subject has basically said it's going to take years and be very very difficult and virtually impossible to pull off and verify. Syria has tons of this stuff, which is difficult to destroy, and it's spread around a country in the heat of an ugly civil war.
Heck, chem weapons in Syria weren't on the radar screen until Obama made a big deal about it. We all agree they're a bad thing, but so is killing 100,000 civilians with RPGs, bombs and napalm. With all the confusions in such a civil war, the different rebel factions, some fighting each other, all fighting Assad's soldiers, there would be so much doubt about it I don't think it would have grown into a big headline. Had Obama not pumped it up I think it would have been just another despicable part of a civil war.
I'm not sure there's ever a winning situation when chem weapons are involved, but that's no reason to readily accept amateurishly screwing things up.
Fern