It should be evident by now to all but his most hope-and-change-besotted acolytes that Obama's sole talents are:  (i) talking up his own game, even when it's naked; (ii) enervating the United States; and (iii) making a mess of whatever he touches.  The current debacle in Syria is a perfect example of the exercise of all three.

And it should be even more painfully obvious that, behind his putative "leadership," our manic lurching to and fro among all manner of unsavory social minefields and dangerous political and international adventurisms will never stop as long as he is on the scene.  Unceasing new chaos breaks across news cycles like waves eroding a broken shoreline.  New shards and tumult are the only dependable result.  His caprices are without end; our attention rivets weekly, or even daily, to his newest "priority"; we are dragged behind him.  The crises are inchoate, and he opens no end of fronts in his battle against us.  In five years we have not gathered our courage to rock him backwards.

Look in vain to a man with as profoundly a dark and unfree a mind as his for answers to anything at all, for he has no good will, and nothing good to tell us.  His every ostensible initiative is a feint or a sabotage.  His great luck lies in somehow not catching fire, as he runs tossing all those lit matches into all those puddles of social and geopolitical gasoline, while the press trots alongside him, constantly spraying him with flameproof foam.

If you think, at this late date in the chronology of what should long ago have been his downfall, that the colossal mess in Syria -- equal parts deep ineptitude and deeper malevolence -- is about anything other than his self-aggrandizement, and his advancement of the caliphate, well, just wait for the coming three years.

But, if you are among his original opponents, or have escaped lately to the relatively fresh air, you can see the country smoldering in the far distance.  The rising panic you feel is from the smoke, rousing your limbic brain to fight-or-flight response.  The right course is to demand that the Congress snare this unhappy raptor, and impeach, convict, and remove him from his stupendously powerful official perch before he gets even crankier.  There is no shortage of outrages which more than justify this "unbelievably small" gesture of self-defense.  Because once we're carrion -- which is soon, if the fraying social and economic fabric is any guide -- he and his drove will swoop down upon us, like vultures do, and it will be too late.

Richard Kantro may be reached at rk4at@hotmail.com