OBAMA TRIES, but he cannot avoid evil.

Ever since Ronald Reagan the warmonger landed in Washington (or since George McGovern said "Come home, America") liberals longed for a foreign policy president who was up to their standards, was as "thoughtful" as they were, and understood all their dreams.

Someone who knew that talk of evil and good was always sophomoric, that the resort to force always was counterproductive, and that the crazy idea that this country was special — promoted by yahoos like Abraham Lincoln — was better described by their own Michael Kinsley as just another excuse to break rules.

Came the dawn and they got him, and we went in six years from a stable Iraq with al Qaeda contained to a Middle East both in flames and in pieces, with civil wars raging in three or more countries and an Islamist movement too bloody for even al Qaeda to stomach, and Russia, having swallowed the Crimea, hovering over Ukraine. Key to all this is a smaller American footprint, a refusal to use force or the threat thereof when it would have been useful, and a failure to rally the world against evil. In short, all the things the liberals called for. We hope they like the results.

Burying one's head in the sand leaves one wide open for an ass-kicking.