President Obama’s purported boy genius, Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes is “not proud” of his boss’s record in failing to prevent genocide, but hey, there was nothing he could have done…. 

That red line in Syria? The one Obama proclaimed and then ignored…. Fugghedatboutit. Tim Mak reports in the Daily Beast about a conversation Rhodes had where the red line apparently never came up.:

Senior White House official Ben Rhodes told Syrian-American activists at a gathering on Wednesday that he was “not proud” of the Obama administration’s Syria policy, according to three people who participated in the interchange.

But Rhodes waved off any suggestion that the United States should be responsible for a conflict that has left millions displaced and hundreds of thousands dead, those attendees said.

“We aren’t proud of our Syria policy—but we don’t have any good options... nothing we could have done would have made things better,” Rhodes said, according to three individuals present: Ibrahim Al-Assil, a fellow at the Middle East Institute; Kenan Rahmani, a policy adviser with the Coalition for a Democratic Syria, and a third individual, who requested to stay anonymous.

As Ed Lasky commented:

The callow genius dismisses what has worked in the past when employed by Republican and Democratic presidents: safe zones and no-fly zones.

His knowledge must drive from playing video games and reading and writing goofy short stories.

What about Samantha Power, the self-described “genocide chick”? What about the grandly announced Atrocities Prevention Board -- that never met?

There should be Halls of Shame and Profiles in Cowardice.