During MSNBC's live coverage before President Obama's speech to the United Nations on Monday, a panel consisting of NBC's Chuck Todd and guest Ian Bremmer of Eurasia Group fretted over the "disaster" of President Obama's Syria policy in the aftermath of Russian President Vladimir Putin's recent success in using the civil war to increase Russian influence in the Middle East.
Todd asserted that "nothing" has been "a bigger failure than" the President's "Syria policy" as he began his analysis. Hosting the segment at about 9:37 a.m., Brian Williams posed: "Chuck, I hate to talk politics on a day of foreign affairs, but let's talk politics. Let's talk what's at stake for Barack Obama."
Todd soberly responded:
Well, it's, this has been, if you look at his foreign policy report card -- it's a tough report card as it is -- but nothing has been, i think, a bigger failure than his Syria policy. And they now acknowledge it. By the way, to promote part two of my interview with Hillary Clinton, she acknowledges it. This has just not worked -- figuring out, "Does Assad go, does he not go, can you defeat ISIS with Assad there or not?"
Like, that is the fundamental strategic question I think allies are having. Obviously now, it is amazing that Putin is essentially forcing the United States to potentially and President Obama to change his policy saying maybe Assad can stay.
The NBC host hinted at President Obama's weakness as he continued:
That's -- think about that -- that's remarkable. And, yes, Putin is as weak as ever at home, but he doesn't act weak, you know, and that's part of his schtick, and that's part of the thing that drives President Obama crazy personally. He feels as if we in the media buy into the Putin schtick too much and that we give Putin too much credit, but the fact of the matter is, he's about to change policy on Syria. To me, that's a "Who's in the position of weakness and who's in the position of strength?"
Moments later, Todd further elaborated on the Russian president embarrassing President Obama as he added:
President Obama said three years -- I mean, in some ways Putin can say I gave you three years to deal with this, it was all yours, I stayed out of your way, I rhetorically said some things, but he wasn't going to stand in the way as the President decided to do airstrikes. I remember covering the G-20 when literally you had half the world's economic powers -- one half was with Obama at that dinner, one half with Putin, he would have, he wasn't going to put up anything other than rhetorical complaints if the U.S. intervened.
Bremmer then jumped in and introduced the word "disaster" into the conversation:
Indeed it goes further than that. Putin would argue that he pulled Obama's keyster out of the coals on Syria because he is the one that ultimately said, "Okay, I'll facilitate a chemical weapons agreement," and then he wrote an op-ed in the New York Times, it was the most read all year, It said, "You hypocrites, here I am trying to make a difference."
So this is a disaster for the Obama administration, I mean, really, it's a question, this is crisis management, It's trying to spin it, they didn't want the meeting, they didn't want our Defense Secretary talking with the Russian minister of defense three times in the last few days to de-conflict it, preempted by Netanyahu doing the same thing when he met with Putin. This isn't an easy one to spin.
