How bad has President Barack Obama mishandled his possible Syria bombing campaign?<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2026President Obama finds himself in the biggest and ugliest public mess of his career, with a total policy meltdown playing out on the front pages and cable TV studios of the world,\u201d writes Walter Russell Mead<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is like a slow motion Bay of Pigs, unrolling at an agonizing, prestige wrecking pace from day to day and week to week. It is almost impossible to defend whatever policy he actually has in mind at this point, yet the consequences of a congressional vote that opposes him are grave.\u201d<\/p>\n Mead\u2019s allusion to JFK\u2019s Bay of Pigs fiasco is instructive. In 1961, the Kennedy administration armed and sent 1,400 Cuban exiles to topple Fidel Castro. However, they didn\u2019t have air support or reinforcements from the U.S. military, and were quickly defeated.<\/p>\n Like Obama, Kennedy wanted to \u2018send a message\u2019 on the cheap, and got what he paid for.<\/p>\n The consequences to America were nearly disastrous. Not only did Castro and his Soviet Union patrons humiliate the United States in front of the world, they interpreted the defeat \u2013 and the resulting timidity \u2013 as a free pass to put ICBMs 90 miles from Florida. Without the Bay of Pigs fiasco as a precursor, it is almost impossible to imagine the following year\u2019s Cuban Missile Crisis.<\/p>\n