Give Obama credit for this, at least

Republicans delight in heaping condemnation on President Obama for everything that goes wrong in our government.   To some extent, the presidency is where the buck stops;  he is responsible.

But there comes a time when the country needs you to move on, and for the president to occasionally get a little praise for what goes right.

 Almost completely ignored in the news is that President Obama's caution with regard to Syria -- specifically his holding off on a military attack in favor of diplomacy and sanctions -- is paying off.

All indications are that Syria is in complete compliance so far with the agreement to reveal and destroy their chemical weapons.   Here is a dispatch from Reuter's news service:

Syria has destroyed all of its declared chemical weapons production and mixing facilities, meeting a major deadline. . .

The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons [a watchdog group] said in the document its teams had inspected 21 out of 23 chemical weapons sites across the country. The other two were too dangerous to inspect but the chemical equipment had already been moved to other sites which experts had visited . . .

"The OPCW is satisfied it has verified, and seen destroyed, all declared critical production/mixing/filling equipment from all 23 sites," the document said. . . .

Under the disarmament timetable, Syria was due to render unusable all production and chemical weapons filling facilities by Nov. 1 - a target it has now met. By mid-2014 it must have destroyed its entire stockpile of chemical weapons.

Now, why is this not a success story for the president?   Suppose we had gone in and bombed them?   What then?   They would still have their chemical weapons, might even have used them in retaliation for the attack.  The hawks' lust for action would have, at best, overthrown a government with no group ready to take charge and run the country.   We might have armed groups affiliated with Al Qaeda.  And then what?

McCain, Graham, and their ilk just want war -- and never mind the consequences.   Isn't Iraq still fresh enough in memory?

Ralph 

PS:   The other big success story this week is that the federal budget deficit has dropped to just half what it was shortly after Obama took office.    But has there been a peep out of Republicans who have been blasting him for "increasing" the deficit?   Not yet.