PUTIN THE PRO WIPES THE FLOOR WITH OUR AMATEUR PRESIDENT

Members of Congress — spooked because their constituents oppose intervening in Syria’s civil war, and alarmed by the president’s inept handling of the crisis — were about to vote down the resolution he tardily asked for to authorize military strikes.  It would have been a humiliating defeat for Barack Hussein Obama.

Then Russian President Vladimir Putin tossed him a lifeline, which Mr. Obama went for like a trout to a fisherman’s lure.

"Putin openly despises your president," Russian political analyst Andrei A. Piontovsky told the New York Times.  Why would he help Mr. Obama out of a jam?

The Russian leader was following sage advice offered by a Chinese general 2,500 years ago.

"Do not press a desperate foe too hard," Sun Tzu said.  "Build your opponent a golden bridge to retreat across."

If you know your enemy and you know yourself, you’ll win all your battles, said Sun Tzu, who most soldiers think is the greatest military strategist who ever lived. 

Mr. Putin knows, as does Con Coughlin, defense editor of the London Telegraph, that "Mr. Obama will grab any excuse he can find to avoid military action against Damascus."

And Mr. Putin knows Mr. Obama is so vain, he’d be more likely to act to protect his own reputation than to protect America’s.  So when another stupid thing Secretary of State John Kerry said provided an opening, the Russians pounced.

Syrian dictator Bashar Assad could avert a U.S. military strike — which earlier in the day he said would be an "unbelievably small, limited kind of effort" — if the regime gave up its chemical weapons, Mr. Kerry said in response to a reporter’s question.

This was a "major goof," one official told CNN.  He "clearly went off script."

"The opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself," Sun Tzu said.

What a swell idea, said Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. We’ll ask our ally to turn his chemical weapons over to an international body.  Mr. Assad readily agreed.

They don’t mean it.

"In the next few days or weeks, there are likely to be apparent steps toward turning Syria’s weapons over to international supervision," said Russian expert David Satter.  "A maximum effort will be made to create the impression of disarmament without actually doing anything."

President Obama couldn’t get onto the golden bridge fast enough.  When he agreed to debate the Russian proposal in the United Nations, a U.S. military strike was postponed, most likely for years, because  "it will be impossible for the White House to ask Congress for tough votes in favor of Syrian strikes so long as the president is grasping onto proposals that eliminate the threat of strikes," said Jonathan Tobin of Commentary magazine.

Shortly after that, Reuters reported: "Syrian warplanes bombed rebel suburbs of Damascus for the first time in three weeks," indicating Mr. Assad "no longer feared attack by the United States."

The Russians gained much more than time for their ally.

"Did the world just legitimize the Assad regime it spent years discrediting?" asked Colum Lynch in Foreign Policy magazine.

Yes, said retired British diplomat Charles Crawford.  Setting up an international group to monitor Syria’s enormous stockpile of chemical munitions  "will require painstaking UN and wider negotiation with the Assad regime, thereby giving Assad… a massive boost of renewed confidence and legitimacy."

The day Mr. Obama said he would debate the Russian plan in the United Nations was "the worst day for US and wider Western diplomacy since records began," Ambassador Crawford said.

Mr. Putin has been handed "the most spectacular public relations victory imaginable," said British journalist Janet Daley.   He can pose as a peacemaker throughout the interminable negotiations in the UN Security Council.  And when they fail – as he’ll make certain they do – Mr. Putin can claim he at least tried to avoid war.

Russia has been shut out of the Middle East ever since Egypt switched sides after the 1973 Arab-Israeli war.  Now Mr. Putin is viewed as the strong horse, Obama as an unbelievably weak horse.  Today the only thing the warring factions in Egypt agree on is that America’s president is a putz.  The dwindling number of our allies in the region are frustrated and fearful.

With good reason.  "If the 1979 takeover of the U.S. embassy in Tehran signaled weakness, the Russian deal screams surrender," said Lee Smith of the Weekly Standard.

"The balance of power has shifted dramatically against America," said former Bush aide Peter Wehner. "It may take decades for us to undo the damage, if even that is possible."

Mr. Obama expects the news media to help him persuade "low information" voters this catastrophe is really a triumph.  It was the threat of military strikes that caused the Russians to offer their peace plan, the White House claims.

He may be disappointed.  Descriptions of his Syria policy by most liberal pundits have not been kind.  One contrasted "President Zig" with "President Zag."  Another likened Mr. Obama’s policy to a "cork bobbling in the water."  Acceptance of the Russian plan, said another, "is akin to letting a serial killer go free and unpunished as long as he turns over the weapons that he used to kill innocents."

Vladimir Putin is content, for now, to let Mr. Obama preen. The more credit he claims for the Russian plan, the more wedded to it he becomes. He’ll have other opportunities in the near future to humiliate the president he despises.

Jack Kelly is a former Marine and Green Beret and a former deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration. He is national security writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.