….of Obama leading from behind.
CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: This is a man who’s been dragged kicking and screaming to face reality. When ISIS came into western Iraq, and took Fallujah, Obama hardly stirred and around that time is when he was calling them the JV team. Then ISIL seizes Mosul, he begins to stir, but it was not until he got a phone call from the leaders of Kurdistan to say Erbil, the capital, was within range of ISIS and it could fall in a few days, and there were a lot of Americans in Kurdistan, and that’s when Obama began to order air strikes.
And it took until we had the brutal murder, the contemptible murder of the Americans, a sort of throwing down the gauntlet, two Americans with their throats slit, where American public opinion, as you can see in the polls, radically changed from being against air strikes to being heavily in favor that Obama decided to do air strikes. This is a classic example of leading from behind.
Where he waits for public opinion and now it’s the public who is demanding he does something. Americans don’t like to see other Americans killed on television by a prideful enemy like that and our president doing nothing. So I don’t think there’s been a lot of layering here, this is all ad hoc, and he’s running so he can catch up with the crowd.
BRET BAIER: You’re saying barring seeing those videos, his policy would be different?
KRAUTHAMMER: Absolutely. It changed everything, it changed public opinion. And Obama is nothing if not responsive to public opinion. He doesn’t lead here, it’s the public that’s leading.