The First Focus Group Battalion

Jim Antle tries to unpack the president's arguments for war kinetic military action:

He offered no coherent argument for this intervention that wouldn't in principle commit us to intervening all over the world, yet at the same time suggested he would not even see this intervention through if it cost too much or took to long. He offered only boilerplate about the nature of the rebellion we are supporting but then refrained from committing to giving the rebels arms.

So which is it? The United States must intervene militarily to avert any humanitarian catastrophe anywhere in the world or else betray our values. But at the same time, we are not going to pursue regime change, we are not responsible for the forces that our interventions unleash and we are not going to stick around as long as that Bush guy did in Iraq. Obama tried to rally the country around the flag as if we are at war, yet continued to pretend we are not at war, refusing to even utter the word. Obama is trying to split the difference, as if war is something that can be handled by focus groups.