Those who "can," do. Often because they have no choice and are left with few if any options. Contrary to the aphorism, those who "can't, teach," rarely, if ever, do. Teaching, after all, tends to be a professional, supportive, constructive, and teambuilding profession that works best among those with a desire or incentive to learn.

Instead of "teaching" our political friends who "can't" now mostly "complain" . . . usually about those who "can" . . . and more often than not about what those who "can" have actually "done." Hence the never-ending GOP carp-fest about what they would either have us believe is President Obama's foreign policy . . . or, if they've been caught "exaggerating," their complaints about what they would have us believe is his lack of a foreign policy.

The 'bomb-bomb-bomb, bomb-bomb Iran' wing of the Grand Old Plutocracy, for example, still insists that refusal to put American combat units on the ground in Syria yesterday (if not sooner) is the moral equivalent of "appeasement," ca 1936.

The Ayn Rand and allied special-insight-into-the-mind-of-god wing of the party assumes a posture that my father and grandfather would have recognized as nothing less than the America-first, Charles Lindbergh brand of isolationism, ca 1940.

Both cohorts of critics, of course, latch onto any turn of phrase, any sound bite, or any set-back large or small as "evidence" of their superior minds, their "expertise" or the depth and relevance of their "historical insight." Such talk, "as they say," is "cheap."

The President, to paraphrase Faulkner, not only has to take responsibility for the orders he issues and the policies he endorses, but bear the burdens of their consequences . . . consequences that affect not only all Americans, but all those whose lives he, and we, and all our friends and allies touch.

Furthermore, the President is not only responsible for the actions he "instigates," but those he allows . . . those, as Faulkner would say, he doesn't say "no" to, even though he knows he should.

Our friends who live by such truisms would do well to remember the world is, indeed, not perfect, and no plan survives the first clash of battle. Politics and foreign policy are, as they say, arts of the possible. President Obama's foreign policy at this point in the history of Eastern Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East has been a prime example of cautious progress in the realm of the possible.

He and his friends and allies do what they can, in the face of intransigent opposition, with the tools at their disposal, in a world of unprecedented complexity and interconnectivity. Appropriately, this President resists demands that he make the same mistakes he has spent most of his time in office trying to fix. Even more important, he resists all manner of hair-on-fire propositions that he not only make new mistakes, but let everyone know he will make them well in advance.

The President's critics, all too often, have either no plans, plans with no support at home or abroad, or worse, plans based on special insight into the fantasy world of perfect intelligence, flawless planning, and cavalry charges with allies who would rather die than suffer the indignity of hearing we thought ill of them. That's not the real world . . . it never has been.

This administration will do whatever it must do to defend our country from those who would incite a war with Russia, have us put unnecessary boots on the ground in the Middle East, and abandon Africa to disease and ethnic cleansing. We bide our time. But woe be to him who mistakes caution or a willingness to negotiate for lack of resolve . . . or believes that an unwillingness to go to war masks an inability to wage it.

We now draw the sword reluctantly, not because we do not know how to use it, but because we know precisely just how terrible and swift it can be.