HOUSE OVERSIGHT 030212 strategic messaging and diplomatic demarches. Email makes it easy for officials up-and-down the chain to plunge into the fray, battling to mold language for use at a daily briefing; language that all- too-often mystifies or misleads foreign listeners who hang on words from the podium as if they are meant to convey the results of deep, deliberative thought on the part of the world's only superpower. Yet email neither created the problem nor prevents its solution. The problem is the failure of government, certainly in the context of Syria and likely in other foreign policy contexts as well, to wrap the daily news cycle food fight in an insulated casing of objectives and strategy clearly understandable to those charged with planning and executing foreign or national security policy. There may be some who believe that objectives and strategy are just so 20th century; so Brent Scowcroft-like and so pre-Twitter. There may be some who actually handle affairs of state in ways they would not dream of applying to their personal financial portfolios. Perhaps resistance to structured, deliberative processes producing objectives and accompanying strategies is a function of fewer and fewer people in the national security establishment ever having availed themselves of military service; an experience where matters of this nature become, through training and education, as natural as breathing. Perhaps in the specific case of Syria there has been a temptation to avoid the hard choices such a process would serve up in the hope that the regime of Basher al-Assad would just go away, thereby making hard choices someone else's problem. The arrival of a new assistant to the president for national security affairs is an ideal opportunity to restore best practices to the national security apparatus. To her credit, Susan Rice appears to be reaching out with this very much in mind. If changes are made that better serve the president by forcing people