The message from Damascus must be heard

It always happens. After endless barrels of ink spilling endless

streams of words, after endless talk spilling endless spumes of yet more words, there finally comes a sentence, phrase, or word that tells everything.

FDR counseled, “We have nothing to fear.” Harry Truman told us where “the buck stops.” JFK was “ein Berliner” and Ronald Reagan said, “Tear down that wall!” All presidents have these key phrases, and Barack Obama? Well, he draws a “Red Line.” Two words. They were casual throwaways, thoughtless even, maybe a glib ad-lib, but they stuck. They are his companions forever-his legacy.

Understand that the Red Line was not for doing something, but for doing nothing. It was a policy of inaction. Syria’s Bashar Assad could do anything he liked to his people, kill a hundred thousand, drive them into Jordan and Turkey, torture them, turn his country into an abattoir; indeed, Lebanonize the whole region. And he, Obama, would do nothing unless Assad crossed the Red Line. Don’t gas them and nothing will happen.America will turn away. That was the Obama doctrine-his policy in two plain words.

Obama doesn’t understand. He has never been shot at, never been a refugee or peered through barbed wire, never been tortured in a police station. He doesn’t understand that you don’t scratch a line in the sand and expect it to stop a serpent. Vipers don’t turn around.

But the problem was that while Obama did nothing, Assad was busy doing something. And Assad had help, he was not alone-there is the Syria-Hezbollah-Iran-Russia Axis. That’s the enemy, but Obama was blind to it. He did not see that he could form an alliance with our friends, isolate the jihadists and counter the Axis. But that would have taken time, vision and leadership.

Instead, for two years he dithered. Then came the message from Damascus: Assad had slithered over the Red Line. He was gassing people. Obama sent John Kerry out to tell us why Obama would stop doing nothing and start doing something. Indeed, that doing something was our moral duty. He would strike the snake.

But the next day Obama did nothing again. He sent the problem to Congress so he would appear to be doing something. He handed Congress the stick. Of course Congress did nothing because that is what Congress always does without a leader.

It stood back and yelled and waved the stick at the creature but did not hit it.

Then Obama, on the eve of 9/11, made a speech. He started by announcing that he would do something and ended by saying he would do nothing again. And he ended by asking Congress to do nothing either-not to vote. He knows its members would vote No because they are terrified of snakes after Iraq,and we are not the “world’s policeman,” and it’s “none of our business.” Others might want to do something but think doing something “unbelievably small” is worse than doing nothing at all.

And a few who would say Yes, despite their doubts, because they believe it would be “catastrophic” to cripple our commander-in-chief in a crisis, and because Assad’s gassing people is our business, and a No vote is a victory for the Axis and a green light for Iranian nukes, which in the end is what this is all about. They also know that doing nothing only makes it harder to do something when it finally just has to be done.

But Congress let go of the stick. And then Obama handed it to Putin. Of course Putin was thrilled to take it. Soon there is a deal for getting the mustard gas and sarin out of Syria-an inventory, a promise. It won’t be done, but it’s a fine fig leaf that fits nicely over Obama’s failure and makes Putin an equal player as he gloats, saves Assad, and arms Iran. Is there now a Red Line in front of the nukes? And who thinks it won’t be crossed?

“We cannot escape History,” said Mr. Lincoln. It won’t leave us alone. It forever imposes its cruel demands, and seems to offer doing our duty as our only consolation.

One who did his duty was Jan Karski, a heroic Pole, who was decorated by Obama with the Presidential Medal of Freedom (posthumously). Karski had escaped from Nazi occupation, had been shot at, been a refugee, peered through barbed wire, been tortured in a police station; he had even been in the Warsaw Ghetto and worse, a death camp. He had gazed into the eyes of the serpent. Jan Karski believed it was his duty to bring a simple message: Hitler was gassing people. He went to the British, who passed him to the Americans. Finally he was sent to Justice Felix Frankfurter, who listened politely and said, “I must say, I am unable to believe you.”

“Are you saying he’s lying, sir?” asked a Polish diplomat sitting nearby.

“No, I did not say he was lying, I said I am unable to believe him. There’s a difference.” To believe the truth might involve actually doing something.

How can we not believe the message from Damascus? And isn’t it our duty to do something about it? Rather than nothing at great length?

Phillip H. McMath is a lawyer, writer and Vietnam veteran who lives in Little Rock.