OBAMA: RIGHT IDEA? WRONG TIME (AGAIN).

President Obama intends to reinforce gun control by executive order.  Indeed, something has to be done, but due consideration has to be given to the more socio/cultural aspects of what a large segment of Americans consider to be their constitutional right.  Besides, the timing is ill chosen, when Americans fear terrorism and Chicago-style urban violence.

In the Middle East the followers of Abu Bakr and Ali are at it again. The tensions between Sunnis and Shiites have reached the danger-zone after the Saudi mass execution last week.

The Shiite cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr figured among the executed. As a result, Sunni and Shia Islam find themselves at loggerheads.

The growing tension in the region will certainly halt any resolution of the Syrian crisis for the moment. It will test the alliances of Russia's and America's allies in the region. Washington is in a precarious situation, bound (by its own doing) by the nuclear deal with Tehran and by the need to reassure Saudi Arabia and the Emirates mostly, who might lose what is left of their trust in the United States in case the Obama Administration triangulates, as usual.

The President is seen as weak and non assertive in matters of foreign policy and strategy.  His lack of clear leadership feeds into the morose mood of the American public and into the more belligerent mood of the Republicans.  Obama should have chosen immediately to reassure the Saudis and to warn the Iranians, who have lately got a free-ride in the Strait of Hormuz, and with missile-testing and "games".  This is a time where leadership should prevail over political games and sound-bites, but knowing the stubborn ways of this White House it is doubtful that clarity of purpose will overrule an agenda steered by political parochial opportunism.  Meanwhile, globally the situation will get worse by the minute. Where are the days of JFK ?