While each international crisis is unique and requires individualized approaches by world leaders, the Obama administration's responses to the ongoing bloodshed in Libya and in Syria are so different there seems to be no consistent foreign and/or military policy coming from the White House.

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Several months ago, President Barack Obama justified US military action in Libya by saying that dictator Muammar Qaddafi's forces were brutalizing Libyan protesters and that, after several diplomatic efforts failed, he authorized military action to stop the killing . US military involvement continues to this day; involvement in which Mr. Obama believes so strongly that he is defying bipartisan members of Congress (and possibly federal law) to continue the operation.

Meanwhile Syria's equally oppressive government has been routinely using tanks and helicopters against its own people for months; killing more than 1,300 and arresting more than 10,000 Syrians who have dared to protest against President Bashar Assad's regime. (source) How does the Obama administration react to that? By allowing its ambassador to Syria to participate in a sanitized trip to an abandoned town meant to justify its military crackdown. (source)

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said the trip allowed Ambassador Robert Ford to "see for himself the results of the Syrian government's brutality." But it's difficult to understand how one can see the results of brutality when the brutalized have been removed from your field of vision and you aren't allowed to hear their side of recent events.

So what exactly are President Obama's determining factors for sending the US military resources into a foreign conflict? How is he deciding which country's civilians are worthy of being saved and which are not? If there is a method behind his seemingly inconsistent choices, we deserve to hear it.