I am on the road once more and not in a position to do a detailed speech response. So here are three reactions from readers. [Update see bonus #4 point below.]



1) It's the long game, once again. A reader writes:

I think that it is worthy of note the difference between Obama's handing of the Syrian WMD, confirmed by the very owner, and George W. Bush's handling of the Iraq WMD, denied by the accused who was proved right in his denial.



Obama now appears to have avoided even the limited strike that the GOP refused to support. In the process he has reestablished the role of Congress' role in declaring war, he has forced the Russian government (not to mention China and the U.N.) to support his initiative and has significantly degraded Assad's capabilities in the midst of a civil war, all without firing a shot.



GWB, meanwhile, fabricated claims of Iraq WMD, which were contradicted by the U.N. inspectors, not to mention Saddam Hussein, both of which proved truthful, and then launched the longest and most expensive war in American history.



Could the comparison be more stark?



Will the MSM [mainstream media] completely miss the point? No doubt to both questions.

2) No punch line. On the other hand, from Congressional veteran Charles Stevenson:

The President's speech lacked a punch line. There was no call for action, no roadmap for how this diplomatic effort might lead to that better world when no one dares to use chemical weapons. "Wait and see," and "don't vote now" leave Congress and the rest of us puzzled rather than reassured.



I also took little comfort from the not-for-attribution briefing where some official ticked off the number of minutes spent in phone calls with the Russians as if to prove "we're not incompetent."

For me, the punch line for the moment is: Perhaps more options exist, and whether or not this Russian offer/ploy turns out to be worthwhile, there is benefit simply in moving the whole discussion past the up-or-down, bomb-or-ignore, decide-on-an-artificial-deadline situation as of two days ago.

3) Stop saying "isolationist." The legal/ political writer Garrett Epps sends in this message:

It's an example of how sloppy journalistic language is that any opposition to the intervention in Syria is portrayed as "isolationist." That word has a historic meaning, and it doesn't mean, "refusal to agree to any military intervention ever proposed, regardless of how hare-brained." I haven't decided how I feel about Syria but this use of words makes my blood boil.

I entirely agree, and will pile on when possible. Which leads me to the similar bonus point #4 : it really is time to stop basing appeals for international action on the "see the videos of children dying horribly" theme. This is a note that the president touched on briefly last night, and that has been the dominant element in presentations by Susan Rice and Samantha Power (as Garance Franke-Ruta noted).