“It’s easy to criticize Obama for sending mixed signals, and in Egypt that included the embarrassing spectacle of the White House’s Hamlet-like vacillation as both the Mubarak and Morsi regimes crumbled.

”But the administration can only be faulted for 'inaction' if you have a clear definition of what 'action' might be. This morning in the Times, for instance, Tom Friedman proposed that Egypt find a 'moderate path' to save itself — rather the same prescription he offered for America in its last election cycle — and while that is without doubt the perfect solution, it’s a wish, not an action plan. John McCain, the last active foreign-policy voice in the Republican Party, has called for America to suspend our $1.5 billion aid to Egypt, a pointless gesture that would only diminish whatever tiny leverage we have there. (Our aid package is dwarfed by the billions Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are now pouring into the post-Morsi order, or chaos.)

“Whatever lessons President Obama has learned or not from the Bush administration, the country took away at least a couple, possibly for a generation: (1) Don’t trust the entire bipartisan political-foreign policy-intelligence-punditry Establishment that pushed the war in Iraq; and (2) don't put American boots on the ground to build democracy in the Middle East.”

-- Frank Rich, “Frank Rich on the National Circus: Obama Looks Lost in Egypt for a Reason,” New York magazine