Krauthammer: Russia 'Playing' U.S. With Syrian Proposal

POLITICO reports that Syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer says the Russians are playing the U.S.

Charles Krauthammer said the Obama Administration was being played by the Russians, who seized the chance by Secretary of State John Kerry’s gaffe of calling any Syrian action “unbelievably small.”

“I think the Russians were playing chess here with a set of rank amateurs, [they] understood that that gaffe gave them the opening they wanted,” Krauthammer said Monday on Fox News’s “Special Report.” “There are two issues here — chemicals and the retaining in power of [Syrian President Bashar] Assad and of the Iran-Hezbollah-Assad-Russian axis dominating the region.”

“The Russians clearly, immediately saw that this enabled them to achieve their two objectives: keep Assad in power, after all, if we’re going to have these negotiations we have to essentially recognize that Assad has to go. He’s the guy that’s going to have to provide the protection for any inspectors, locate the sites, he’s going to have to be in there,” he added.

You can read the rest of the piece via th below link:

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/09/charles-krauthammer-syria-russia-96507.html?hp=l9

Krauthammer: If Obama Is Going To Strike Syria, He Should Do it Constitutionally And With Purpose

Charles Krauthammer in his column at National Review Online, offers his take on Obama's decision, or indecision, to strike Syria.

Having leaked to the world, and thus to Syrian president Bashar Assad, a detailed briefing of the coming U.S. air attack on Syria — (1) the source (offshore warships and perhaps a bomber or two), (2) the weapon (cruise missiles), (3) the duration (two or three days), (4) the purpose (punishment, not “regime change”) — perhaps we should be publishing the exact time the bombs will fall, lest we disrupt dinner in Damascus.

So much for the element of surprise. Into his third year of dithering, two years after declaring Assad had to go, one year after drawing — then erasing — his own red line on chemical weapons, Barack Obama has been stirred to action.

There are risks to any attack. Blowback terror from Syria and its terrorist allies. Threatened retaliation by Iran or Hezbollah on Israel — that could lead to a guns-of-August regional conflagration. Moreover, a mere punitive pinprick after which Assad emerges from the smoke intact and emboldened would demonstrate nothing but U.S. weakness and ineffectiveness.

You can read the rest of the column via the below link:

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/357167/shamed-war-charles-krauthammer