Over the course of his presidency, Barack Obama's supporters have had to grapple with the tension between his generosity toward his critics, and his related reluctance to demagogue and politick in ways that would rally more Americans to his side.

That's not to say he never demagogues, as I'm certain Mitt Romney's supporters will remind me. But he has an at-times puzzling tendency to cede points to his critics when he could seize the advantage by sharpening distinctions, particularly when his own favorables are at or near all-time lows.

On that score, this riff about critics of his Russia-Ukraine policy was a welcome departure.

“Why is it that everybody is so eager to use military force,” Obama said at a Monday press conference in the Philippines, “after we’ve just gone through a decade of war at enormous cost to our troops and to our budget. And what is it exactly that these critics think would have been accomplished?”

He's a politician, and I'm a journalist, so it's on me to note that irrespective of his critics' bloodthirst, and irrespective of what I think ideal policy would be, he's both drawing a false dichotomy and a false identity between supplying arms and invasion/occupation.