WaPo’s Charles Lane: Obama ‘Doesn’t Have the Muscle’ To Talk About Democracy in Syria

BAIER: “Chuck?”

LANE: “Well, I think another thing Putin is about is trying to broadcast this idea that the world is better off with dictators. Because he spent a lot of time discussing the bad fallout of the Arab Spring and blamed all this uprising on western meddling in support of democracy. That’s how we really got where we are in Syria. I think he is inviting the world to join him, as it were in reestablishing a kind of – he refer Yalta after World War II, a new order like Yalta where we turn a blind eye to the abuses of dictators, and indeed, we support them and shore them up because the alternative is always chaos and bloodshed and terrorism. And you know whose political fortunes that argument serves particularly well? Vladimir Putin, because he is a dictator. This sort of siren song that he's singing there at the U.N. of -- let's go back to the good old days, we had dictators who kept stability. Unfortunately, he's going to be attracted to some people because of the horrible mess that's been allowed to fester in Syria. And so when President Obama gets up there and talks about democracy and stuff, he doesn't have the muscle behind it and indeed a little bit of the kind of seductive logic that Putin is bringing as well.“