I guess you'd have to say the questions were "tough" considering that Mika Brzezinski was the one asking them. And you get the impression President Obama wasn't expecting to be challenged, although his instincts kicked in and he did what he does best - insist that nothing that ever goes wrong has anything to do with him.
Let's take a look at three of his answers in particular:
1. Syria. Obama responds to her question about intervening in Syria by disputing the notion (which she never offered, by the way) that there was an "easy" way to solve the problem. Of course there was no easy way to do it. No one ever suggested otherwise. Obama doesn't think he should ever have to do anything difficult. You don't take action because it's easy. You take action because it's necessary to prevent bigger problems from emerging if you don't.
2. Afghanistan. No, Obama says, he will not change his plans from a total pullout from Afghanistan in 2016 because everything that went wrong with the Iraq pullout was Maliki's fault. If only he hadn't refused to grant immunity to U.S. troops from legal jeopardy, they would have had a status of forces agreement. Bolshevik. Any time you negotiate an agreement, the parties start with difficult demands. Your job is to work out a deal that both sides can live with. Obama used Maliki's opening position on legal prosecution of U.S. troops as an excuse to abandon the talks altogether because ne never wanted to keep forces in Iraq. The Afghans will likely start with demands he doesn't like as well. That will mean getting a deal done isn't easy. See item No. 1.
3. Iraq's recent stability. Yes, he says, Iraq was stable a few years ago. That doesn't mean it's going to be stable now. Correct. Because taking a promising situation and making sure it goes in the right direction requires you to make good decisions. Obama makes bad decisions. We needed a status of forces agreement to help secure Iraq's long-term stability. Obama didn't want to do that, though, so now ISIS is overrunning the country. But that has nothing to do with him, he says, because it "exceeds our capabilities" to play "whack-a-mole" and occupy every country where there might be a threat.
Um. About that: We have status of forces agreements with more than 100 countries. Keeping a residual force in Iraq would have still represented a major reduction in our commitment of resources there, not some sort of huge increase that put us past the breaking point. And yes, we keep forces in all those countries precisely because we need that global presence to counter threats. Obama may not like it, but that is one of the things you do when you're a global leader.
To Obama, the only real goal in Iraq has always been to get out, because he built much of his political viability on that very notion. The fact that it's proving to be a policy disaster is of no importance to him. Iraq was Bush's war and that has nothing to do with Obama.
Nothing ever does.
