 Obama's decision to allow the violation of a red line he himself had drawn to go unpunished is widely criticised by the U.S. political establishment, as well as the allies, as detrimental to America's international credibility.However, in early 2016, Obama said he was "proud" of his decision, which repudiated what he referred to as the "Washington playbook" and avoided entangling the US in yet another "unfixable" situation in the Middle East.More broadly, regarding Obama's lack of meaningful support to the Syrian anti-government rebels, in 2015, "The Economist" opined, "Rarely has an American president so abjectly abandoned his global responsibility", adding in 2016, "The agony of Syria is the biggest moral stain on Barack Obama's presidency.