The Wall Street Journal denounces Ted Cruz for his foreign policy deviationism. This part was especially risible:
On Syria Mr. Cruz’s “no dog in the fight” line is a way of doubling down on his 2013 opposition to enforcing a chemical red line in Syria by bombing the Assad regime. That bipartisan failure to enforce President Obama’s red line sent a disastrous signal that U.S. threats were empty and encouraged much of the mayhem that has followed [bold mine-DL]—from Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine to Islamic State’s capture of Mosul.
As far as traditional conservatives are concerned, a quarrel between the
WSJ and Ted Cruz is the Iran-Iraq war of intra-Republican battles: the only problem is that they can’t both lose. But on this particular foreign policy question, the
Journal editors are profoundly wrong as usual and Cruz makes the stronger case. It’s worth pointing this out here to appreciate how superficial and bankrupt the arguments of Syria hawks have been and continue to be.
Drawing the “red line” was one of Obama’s more serious errors in Syria. Attempting to follow through on that threat was another. It is amusing that the
Journal editors are accusing Cruz of being too much like Obama while they argue for enforcing the unnecessary threat that Obama made. They attack Cruz because he has dissented from the bipartisan consensus in favor of more extensive meddling in Syria’s civil war, and in doing so he is also rejecting Obama’s Syria policy of the last several years. The reality is that the
WSJ editors are closer to Obama on Syria than Cruz is, and they are desperate to distract attention from this. Cruz can and should be accused of many things, but siding with Obama on major foreign policy questions isn’t one of them.
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