John Kerry spent much of his testimony Tuesday before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee walking back an earlier remark about how the U.S. could end up deploying soldiers on the ground in Syria. The secretary of state tried to allay the fears of senators who are in favor of only quick, easy and bloodless wars (and also the tooth fairy) by saying President Obama "has no intention and will not and we do not want to put American troops on the ground to fight this or be involved in the fighting of the civil war." He called the earlier scenario he'd painted, in which we could see American boots on the Syrian ground, merely "a hypothetical question," the result of his "thinking out loud" before the committee.

Now that Kerry mentions it, there's no better description of the Obama administration's policy toward Syria and its dictator, Bashar al-Assad, than "thinking out loud." That is but one of the reasons the best option, in a situation with no particularly good options, is for America not to attack Syria at this time.

Here's where "thinking out loud" has gotten us so far:

The president's "red line" remark in August 2012 about the Syria regime's potential use of chemical weapons against its own people was famously improvised and rued by his advisers almost as soon as he spoke. Nevertheless, the president did not in any obvious way spend the 365 days that passed between his drawing a line in the sand and Assad's reported crossing it to prepare for that eventuality. There was no international coalition waiting in the wings; to the extent there was, it was so fragile as to crumble when the time came for it to act (most notably with the British Parliament's vote last week against intervening in Syria). Nor did Obama lay the necessary groundwork with Congress so that, if Assad were to use chemical weapons, we and our allies could act quickly, decisively and without the warning that comes with the agonized deliberations we've witnessed over the past two weeks.

Instead, Obama maintained for the longest time that he did not need permission from Congress to carry out a strike, the same constitutional logic he deployed regarding our intervention in Libya. Suddenly, and reportedly against the advice and wishes of his advisers, Obama reversed himself last weekend and said he would give Congress a say after all. But he did not ask members to interrupt their plans and return from their August recess early; he has been content to wait an additional week, until their scheduled return. Today in Sweden, Obama said the "red line" and questions of credibility belonged not to him but to Congress and the entire world. (Someone forgot to brief him about U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's statement Tuesday that an attack like the one Obama is contemplating would not be "lawful," and the fact our ostensible "coalition of the willing" in Syria is shaping up as far smaller than the one for Iraq in 2003.)

The senators who returned early to hear the pitch from Kerry on Tuesday were treated to a mid-hearing trial balloon about what might happen if things didn't go according to plan, one that was quickly pulled down when the senators reacted to it as if they'd not been briefed about the possibility a war could proceed other than according to plan.

To be fair to them, I suppose, Kerry also argued our taking up arms against a foreign country in the middle of a chaotic and bloody (100,00 dead, the vast majority of them by conventional weapons) civil war would not amount to an actual "war." Or, at least, not "going to war in a classic sense."

Our soldiers and their potential adversaries will surely appreciate the distinction.

This is not to make the case for a larger intervention in Syria. It is far from clear what even a larger intervention would accomplish, given the uncertain nature of the rebels we would effectively be backing and the lack of an obvious national interest at stake.

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That said, it is patently dishonest for the Obama administration to talk as if a larger intervention absolutely will not happen.

As distressing as it is to see our "smart power" diplomacy disintegrate into this series of strategic and linguistic embarrassments, what's most worrisome is not that Kerry was so clumsy in introducing the idea of ground troops and then walking it back. It's that he chose to walk back the idea, rather than continue to acknowledge its unappealing, yet undeniable, reality.

Wars do not go according to plan, as we know almost 12 years later in Afghanistan, more than a decade after the invasion of Iraq, and nearly one year after our ambassador and three other Americans were killed in Libya -- the last country where we intervened out of a "moral" sense of duty but with no commitment to see that the intervention led to a better outcome for the people who lived there or our own national interests. Libya is increasingly a land of lawlessness and economic crisis (its daily oil output, a key measure of the Libyan economy's most important sector, has fallen by almost 90 percent over the course of this year).

The notion that Assad will simply take whatever punishment we dole out to him -- without responding in a way that threatens our soldiers, civilians or interests, and without constituting another actionable offense per "international norms" -- is naive to the point of being reckless. The only question is whether his inevitable response can be contained or, as in the scenario Kerry sketched out and then hastily erased, will compel further, more dangerous and involved action on our part.

Of course, to that end it would be helpful to know what our intervention would be designed to achieve. Is it regime change? Obama and other officials have suggested Syria will not be at peace as long as Assad remains in power, but they insist we will not try to oust him ourselves. Our military stands the best chance of bringing about regime change with the least number of lives cost, but apparently our leaders will countenance tens of thousands more Syrians killed as long as they die via bullets rather than sarin gas.

Is the goal to ensure he cannot carry out another chemical weapons attack, since that was the "red line" he crossed? Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, who also testifed at Tuesday's hearing, said only that our objectives are to "degrade" Assad's capabilities and "deter" him from using chemical weapons again. Both of these fall on this side of "prevent." If we shoot some missiles and bluster about responsibility and accountability, only to see Assad use WMDs again, who will have taught whom a lesson?

Even when wars appear to go according to plan -- as in the first Gulf War, which gave Americans this false belief that we can conduct "safe" wars -- history often proves otherwise. That war, of course, left Saddam Hussein in power and able to use chemical weapons against his own people, to defy United Nations resolutions to give up his WMD programs, and to plan the assassination of by then ex-President George H.W. Bush. We all know how that ended.

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On the subject of Iraq, I've seen and heard numerous people suggest the main difference between an intervention in Syria and our invasion of Iraq is that we no longer have a reckless "cowboy" in the White House. This is to forget that George W. Bush spent more than a year making his case for war to the United Nations and the American people, not hoping he could bluff his way to inaction. It is to mistake ad libs for preparation, bromides about responsibility for leadership, "thinking out loud" for thoughtfulness. And I say all this as someone who also opposed the Iraq invasion because it was being sold as easier, safer, morally clearer and more well-conceived than seemed possible.

If you still believe Obama and his "thinking out loud" smart set can't and won't be caught by the same kinds of pitfalls that have ensnared countless leaders over the course of history, you're self-identifying as either blindly partisan or just plain blind.

This administration, and particularly on this issue, has shown neither the preparation nor the competence, neither the vision nor the resolve, to be trusted with this kind of action. It should not take us to war in Syria, in the classic sense or otherwise.