Remember how Nixon extricated the United States from Vietnam while ending Chinese isolation and bolstering the democratic capitalism then stirring in Asia. He succeeded because he had a grand strategy for the region. Obama never developed a coherent strategy for the Middle East. He embraced the idea of building democracy in Afghanistan but placed a time limit on his involvement there. Building democracy was never going to work, but particularly was it going to fail when the forces of old—Taliban chieftains and other sectarian leaders—knew that all they had to do was wait out the intervention. The policy made no sense, and there’s little in the country to show for it.

As for Iraq, there’s some truth in the argument of the American right that Obama inherited a relatively stable situation that turned unstable on his watch. It may not be entirely fair, given that it was George W. Bush who unleashed the regional whirlwind with his Iraq invasion. But politics isn’t always fair, geopolitics even less so. And it was Obama’s responsibility to maintain the stability level he inherited. It may be an open question whether leaving a military force in Iraq as a show of U.S. resolve would have ensured such stability. But he needed to pursue whatever policies could have built on what he inherited. That he didn’t manage that is probably related to his apparent confusion about just what his policy philosophy should be in the region.

He helped destabilize Libya when Muammar Qaddafi came under internal pressure, but stood back when Syria’s Bashar al-Assad encountered a similar revolt. He piled on when the longtime U.S. ally Hosni Mubarak ran into trouble in Egypt, then remained largely mute when Egypt came under the control first of the Muslim Brotherhood and then of the old military oligarchy. He mocked the significance of the ISIS menace in Syria and Iraq, then committed America to degrading and destroying that truly ominous force once it had gained a major foothold in both countries, much to his surprise.