The Naked Emperor

I found an article in The Atlantic that details very intimately the events and circumstances surrounding the Syrian "red line," and Obama's blunder in not fulfilling his word and other foreign policy events of his presidency.

I suppose I should be fair and say that most of Obama's foreign policy has been prudent, and I agree with his assessment that a lot of the world has been "free riding" on America's willingness to intervene.  However, the Syrian "red line" event completely obliterated any path for me to assess his foreign policy as "successful."

It's like Hillary Clinton said here, "If you say you’re going to strike, you have to strike. There’s no choice."  If he wanted to pull this 'put it before Congress' trick, he should have asked Congress BEFORE laying down a red line.  You cannot lay down a red line and not enforce it if you want to be taken seriously.

Obama, with this one act, did incalculable damage to his and America's credibility abroad.  By the time Obama "found himself recoiling from the idea of an attack unsanctioned by international law or by Congress," it was already too late to be feckless.  He had his opportunity to exhibit prudence prior to his "red line" speech and blew it by laying the red line.

Obama will be remembered as the emperor who bluffed; and when Assad called his bluff, everyone saw that he had no pants on.

Read it on their website first.  I am keeping the article below for backup in case this link goes bad in 20 years.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/04/the-obama-doctrine/471525/

Israel and Salary Caps

I've suggested exactly this idea before, so I will be most interested to see how it works out in Israel: capping salaries at a given percentage of the lowest paid person in the company.

http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/business/.premium-1.709326