The Reading Warehouse

Incredibly, within just 90 minutes after his unwavering announcement to the world (on September 30th, 2013) that the United States may indeed bomb Syria, President Obama inexplicably changed course and was already contemplating calling the whole thing off. But who and/or what exactly could have happened to so abruptly cause President Barack Obama to make the consensus, greatest foreign policy blunder of his eight-year Presidency - by backing down, ultimately for good, from enforcing his "Red Line" Ultimatum against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for launching a banned chemical weapons attack that killed over 1,300 of his own people in August 2013?

In A President's Dithering False Bravado, Patterson meticulously and compellingly presents the case that, based on sound deductive reasoning, there exists the requisite preponderance of evidence to persuasively and conclusively support the contention as to who or what nation caused and convinced President Barack Obama - that very same day - to back down from enforcing his "Red Line" Ultimatum against Syria in 2013.

Even more intriguing, why did President Obama believe it to be so imperative to capitulate - even at the indelible risk to his Presidential foreign policy legacy; given the torrent of criticism that he has been forced to endure ever since for having backed down from enforcing his "Red Line" Ultimatum against Syria and, in particular Bashar al-Assad. Moreover above all else, why couldn't Barack Obama ever let it be known to the American People exactly who or what nation it was that ultimately forced President Obama's hand into backing down from enforcing his "Red Line" Ultimatum against Syria in 2013?

What's more, dithering even further - less than 24 hours later - President Obama stunningly reverses himself a second time the very next day; by contradictorily declaring "Now after careful deliberation presumably overnight], I have decided that the United States should take military action against Syrian Regime targets...So to all members of Congress of both parties, I ask you to take this vote approving Congressional authorization] for our National Security... I'm ready to act in the face of this outrage." And yet in 2016, Barack Obama contradicts himself again; insisting that, in truth, no such threat to U.S. National Security, in fact, ever existed after all.

Third, although only six days after that (September 6th, 2013) and despite repeated threats of false bravado to hold Syria militarily responsible, President Obama makes another 180-degree foreign policy decision reversal; conceding to Russian President Vladimir Putin that the United States would call off its military strike against Syria if Assad would just agree - as his only penalty - to surrender his country's entire banned chemical weapons arsenal to the International Community. A condition to which Assad agreed to do, but ultimately did not comply with and for which Assad and Syria were never militarily punished throughout the remainder of the Obama Presidency.

Finally in his fourth major foreign policy decision reversal over just fifteen days (on September 14th, 2013), at the insistence of Vladimir Putin, President Obama - "turning on a dime" once again - backed down from his previously unswerving demand that the Syrian Chemical Weapons Agreement call for a compulsory military response should Syria fail to turn over its entire chemical weapon stockpile - effectively dooming the enforcement of the agreement to ultimate failure from its inception.
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A President's Dithering False Bravado is Gary R. Patterson's sixth book over the last ten years - all of which chronicle and critique the two-term Presidency of Barack Obama (2009-2017).