Bret Baier asked Charles Krauthammer about the escalation of violence in the Middle East, and Krauthammer said that it was the logical result of Obama facing opponents who have military strategies rather than just diplomatic ones:
It’s an escalation because the Russians are utterly determined to achieve their strategic objectives and Obama has no strategic objectives. We heard the state dept saying, “We have tried this reasonable approach.” Yeah, they applied a reasonable approach with an adversary in Putin whose assumptions about this war are totally different. Obama believes you don’t solve problems like these through force, they can’t be — there’s no military solution, it has to be done by diplomacy. That would be great if the other side had the same thought. Unfortunately Putin assumes, and is correct in assuming, that some civil wars have a military outcome. The Spanish Civil War in the thirties had a military outcome; the American Civil War had a military outcome.
This idea that you solve it by diplomacy and withhold any application of pressure is simply a fantasy. Five years ago when the civil war began, we had the advantage. We were in control of the region; we could have put the Syrian air force out of business by destroying the airplanes and hitting the airfields. That’s all we had to do. No war, no invasion, the Russians weren’t there — we did nothing, now we have no assets, the Russians have all the assets. That’s why we walked away, because the diplomatic approach has been totally shown to be bankrupt.
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