I think Bob Dreyfuss is rather badly off the mark with his analysis. The starting point for understanding President Obama on Syria is that he has never wanted to get involved in the civil war and he has resisted all efforts to get embroiled there, making at each step the minimum amount of commitment he felt he could get away with. He has faced a lot of criticism from our Sunni allies in the region, from Israel and their domestic lobbyists, from liberals concerned about the humanitarian crisis, and from Republicans who seize on any sign of weakness or unwillingness to use the military to solve problems. That things have deteriorated badly in Syria over the last several years is unfortunate, but if you want to blame the president, you are talking about sins of omission, not commission.
When he felt his “red line” had been crossed, he authorized lethal aid to the rebels. And then he delayed its delivery. When the August 21 attacks occurred, he delayed by asking for congressional authority. As to the Russian gambit, the administration had discussed the possibility of disarming the Assad regime of its chemical weapons for a year without results. Letting the Russians know that the offer was still on the table was an astute move which promptly paid off.
I think what Dreyfuss is missing is that the president has to deal with a foreign policy establishment that feels that the only way to stop the civil war in Syria and get a tolerable outcome is to tilt the battlefield in favor of the rebels and force Russia and the Assad regime to cut a deal that might protect the Alawites from Sunni reprisals in a post-Assad environment. That’s probably not bad analysis, but achieving it without a large military commitment is nearly impossible. And Obama (not to mention, the American people) has not wanted to make a large military commitment to Syria. He hasn’t even wanted to make a small military commitment.
Nevertheless, events and his own rhetoric led him slowly down that path until the August 21st attacks left him with no option but to respond. But how would he respond?
Initially, he responded by acceding to his own foreign policy establishment and calling for limited punitive strikes that would have actually been designed to tilt the battlefield in the rebels’ favor (although not to the point that they would force an abdication). The policy was nonsensical, which was plain to almost everyone, but something had to be done.
For Vladimir Putin, a refiguring of the battlefield in Syria was not in his interests. So, suddenly, it became preferable to offer the deal Obama had been asking for for a year.
The downside is that the battlefield will remain tilted in Assad’s favor. That is what Russia gets out of it. What Obama gets out of it is the avoidance of deeper commitment to a complete quagmire, a total solution to the chemical weapons problem, an effective enforcement of the norm against the use of chemical weapons, the gratitude of a war-weary public, and one more example of the charmed life he leads, this time with almost a magician’s twist.
The hawks will be unhappy. Anyone who wants a quick end to Syria’s civil war will be unhappy, but they were relying on mission creep to get the job done. And that is exactly what Obama has been fighting against from Day One.
You may find reasons to disagree with the man’s policies. You may think he bears some responsibility for the tragedy in Syria because he has refused to make it America’s responsibility to solve, but he’s fought off everyone, including in his own cabinet, and come out the other side with a way out that is hard to criticize. Raise your hand if you saw it coming.
Obama is fine. But how does John Kerry go to the Israeli/Palestinian negotiations with this performance dogging him. He’s not going terrorize them with his crazy uncle antics.
How do Obama and Kerry explain their failure, after pulling out every rhetorical trick in the book, to take down, if not out, Assad to the powers in Israel and KSA?
The Israel/Palestinian negotiations haven’t been anymore real with this administration than they’ve been for the past two decades.
Obama never promised Israel and the KSA anything.
That is about what they will receive, too. Honestly, I thought it was just going through the motions of a second term presidential peace balloon, anyway.
We’ll never know now will we?
But we do know when Obama made his “red line” declaration. And who had been lining up in support of Romney.
We also know when team Obama began sending in all those helpful military trainers in support of Syrian rebels.
.
How do you know? Every move on Syria has been meticulously planned with ally Netanyahu. Israel added its political punch to the Obama proposal for a punitive attack plus+ on Syria’s military facilities. Every detail has been talked through between the chief of staffs IDF and the Pentagon. Intelligence has been exchanged and all contingency plans put in place. This year it has been Israel and Netanyahu which acted with bombing raids on Syria. With Israel and Saudi Arabia/Emirates there is full cooperation with the US on Syria. The overthrow of Morsi and the Muslim Brothers in Egypt has been welcomed by these same countries. Turkey, Qatar and Hamas have lost out with the Muslim Brothers. Prince Bandar and King Abdullah rule the civil war in Syria, so this will be a setback for them and especially PM Erdogan and Turkey. They will be furious, but I don’t care about a unreliable Turkey. I like this latest move in the direction of diplomacy that was long overdue. The lead on Syria has changed hands from hawk Susan Rice to “diplomat” John Kerry. Previous meetings and phone calls with Lavrov had all been cancelled in recent weeks, now the two suddenly will meet in Geneva. Believe you me, there was no backchannel between the US and Russia in recent months, complete bs for parties to save face.
For Israel, the removal of WMDs from Syria will be a big win and must be recognized as such by Netanyahu. I see no negative side with respect to Iran. Maliki in Iraq will be satisfied as the Sunni population has become radicalised and the source of sectarian violence with bombings. Israel desires a bit of ruckus in the region, they can manage trouble spots but stability in a weakened Syria is welcome. Russia will support the old regime in Syria with or withoud the Assad brothers because of arms deals and its East Med naval base in Tarsus.
In an interview today, I watched a unhappy Frederic C. Hof, the US envoy to Syria under Ms Clinton. His mindset was identical to McCain and Graham as I had suspected all along.
I’m trying to find a point. Turkey and the Sauds will be furious. Israel gets a big win, as you point out, but maybe not all they were hoping for. I don’t see any broken promises. I see that promises were not made.
AIPAC and Israel are still working law makers, so they’re not getting everything they want, at least not yet.
Lobbying in DC? That’s a harbinger of the sun having not gone nova that particular day. Pardon my glibness. Most days I cannot help myself.
But seriously, who expects any one side to get everything they want?
Israel mostly. Republicans.
Netanyahu and Israel are keeping a very close watch on the region. Contingency plans come and go as the circumstances evolve. A civil war next door becomes a great risk because of the chemical weapons. If the Assads and the Baath party would be overthrown through military means with help from the US, there would be chaos. Israel wouldn’t mind as they would have further degraded the rebel factions with devastating bombing raids. The rebel terror groups can hardly be considered a party to deal with in a political sense. Netanyahu will be fine with this solution and a political peace settlement is on the horizon if step one succeeds.
○ Syria placing CW under int’l control won’t satisfy Turkey
○ Gulf ministers to weigh measures against Syria
○ Gulf Arab states say Russian chemical weapons proposal to Syria will not stop bloodshed
Then this from the NYTimes suggests that the US tells Israel what to do and that means that we are the impediment to an Israeli/Palestinian agreement.
>>the US tells Israel what to do
LOL!
Bingo!
I know we are miles from there but just take a minute to consider how negotiations might fare w/o a Syria in an official state of war with Israel. Israel might be a bit less paranoid, and the Palestinian hard-liners might be a bit less confident. That might leave both sides a bit less willing to undermine signs of progress.
We now return to our violent reality.
Depends on how it ends. If this ends the way I hope it does, ending the Iraq War or killing OBL (not that I supported that mission, but “history” and America clearly did) will not be his foreign policy achievement. This will.
Why do you think so?
Well for starters bin-Laden’s hatred of the USA was rooted in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. If President Obama is in office when the Assad regime comes to an end that opens the door to an end of the offical state of war between Syria and Israel. That in turn opens all sorts of doors: no reason to pump support to Hezbollah in Lebanon, no bordering state actively looking to smuggle arms into Israel to support Palestinian militants, a general lessening of tensions.
Bin Laden was the poster boy, the the I/P conflict is teh root cause.
That rather misunderstands a number of points.
You are correct, however, that a new government in Damascus would be openly hostile to Hizbollah, and it would totally change the nature of Lebanese society, government, and culture. It would quickly change the situation at the Israeli border, too.
I’ve argued in the past that if we were going to attack a country in the Middle East that had nothing to do with 9/11, it should have been Syria instead of Iraq, precisely because it would have had this kind of positive impact on the northern border of Israel, and cut off Iran’s reach to there.
But the kind of government we’re looking at in Syria will be no friend to Israel, at least until they get something quite valuable in return.
But his radicaliization began more than a decade if not two decades before any US troops were stationed in Saudi Arabia.
That radicalization has a lot to do with the Israeli situation and western support for Israel. I do not think it is wrong to say that decades of war between Israel and Arab states is the root cause for ObL’s decision to live his life in jihad.
2) Syria might not be really happy-smiley with Israel after someone else takes over, but it is hard for me to swallow the suggestion that the Syria is the only country still officially at war with Israel has nothing to do with the fact that one father-son strongman duo has ruled Syria for the vast bulk of that time.
Such an end to the state of war might not happen should Assad fall. But it will never happen so long as he reains in power.
To return to the original point, if PBO manages to end the last state of war between an Arab nation and Israel, that will indeed be seen as a much more significant accomplishment that the killing of one particularly notorious terrorist spawned by those decades of violence. And I cannot be sure since I kibbutzed, but I think this is the vision the OP had in mind.
It’s been a while since I read Steve Coll’s biography of the bin-Laden family, which is a very interesting and well-researched book.
What I remember is that Usama was an only child to his mother who was not much favored by his father, and he had kind of a low status within the family. In school, we met a religious scholar who introduced him to some pretty extreme views. That motivated him to go to Pakistan where he was further radicalized and he used his inherited wealth to help run the pipeline of Arab kids who went into Afghanistan to fight the godless Soviets.
When the Persian Gulf War was getting under way, he made an offer to the Saudi government to use his father’s construction company (that had rebuilt Mecca) to build fortifications that would protect the Kingdom from any possible invasion from Iraq. When the monarchy turned him down, he denounced them and was forced into exile. And that is when he founded al-Qaeda.
He also wanted to use his network of fighters to defend the Land of the Two Holy Mosques. No doubt he was offended when the Saudis turned him down and hosted an infidel army.
My own opinion is that the Israel/Palestine is not quite the root cause although it is a rallying issue. There is a larger vision of uniting the Ummaa’ and once again achieving dominance. The history of Western colonialism, interventionism, and rule by proxy all fuels the fire.
I buy this.
My own opinion is that the Israel/Palestine is not quite the root cause although it is a rallying issue.
It might not qualify as root cause in the pure sense but it is an important driver shaping the life of ObL.
All which is discussed under the OP categorization of Israel being the larger issue than this one very deadly man.
Well we all agree his radicalization began long before any American boots were on Saudi ground and we all agree that radicalization began and was deeply influenced in a greater Arab society that had its grievances over colonialism and second class status to the west rubbed raw by the matter of Israel. So I don’t think we are saying much that is different on that angle.
But to return to the point of the OP, if we one day see President Obama’s actions as decisive in ending the state of war between Syria and Israel, that will be seen as a greater accomplishment than the act of bringing down this notorious violent individual.
Bin Laden’s hatred of the US, and that of countless other militant Muslims, was not so much rooted in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict as in the presence of US troops in Saudi Arabia after the Gulf War, from 1990 to 2003.
That’s too narrow. He and Zawahiri abhor western values and the governing elites of their respective countries that exist with western support.
I’ll buy that.
Lawrence Wright’s The Looming Tower presents a good starting point for the modern rise in fundamentalist Islam.
As mentioned in my longer reply, that basing began in the early 1990s. ObL joined al queda in 1979 after leaving college and undoubtably was radicalized some time before that. The root cause therefore cannot be the US basing in SA. That may well have added much fuel to the fire, but uit was already burning.
If there are no bordering state activity looking to smuggle arms to support Palestinian militants, what becomes the fate of Palestinians? Until there is justice for the Palestinians within apartheid Israel, the I/P conflict does not go away and the border issue might shift to Egypt.
Bin Laden’s radicalism was rooted in the marginalization of his Yemeni family within Saudi society in spite of the wealth that his family acquired. And it was first focused on the Saudi royal family and then through his religious studies transferred to focusing on Western corruption, which could embrace many issues. At the time of 9/11, the screed included three things: Saudi royal tyranny, Israel’s suppression of Palestinians, and the presence of US troops defiling the holy nation of Saudi Arabia. The US was still there a decade after the First Gulf War manning the no-fly zone over Iraq. It is too easy to talk of bin Laden’s hatred, when what motivated him was his vision that the US could be beaten like the Soviet Union was beaten and that would open the way for the restoration of purity in Saudi Arabia and the holy sites, which could become the center of a new caliphate that could embrace all Islam. It wasn’t hatred; it was political and military calculation. And he was willing to use extreme measures.
European imperialism that took over a collapsed Ottaman Empire was the root cause. Israel was just the last colony established and followed the US-Australian pattern of colonialism instead of the British and French Africa pattern of colonialism. Palestinians faced and still face ethnic cleansing or reservation status. That is why Israel is much different from the transition away from colonialism of Egypt and Syria and Iraq.
I do not see continued delivery of heavy arms to Palestinians as an definite precondition for a happy future for Palestinians. It’s not worked particularly well for the past 46 years. If you find the status quo to be a productive state of affairs so be it.
ObL’s radicalization began decades before 9/11.
European colonialism lasted for a few decades. Ottoman colonialism lasted for a few centuries. If you want to refer to colonialism we agree. If you trace 100% of that feeling against Europeans we don’t.
These feelings were rubbed raw by the creation of Israel. ObL grew up in an Arab society with said raw feelings. It is hard to conclude ObL would have grown up to be the ObL we know had there not been the Israeli conflicts keeping resentment so high and widespread in the Arab world
Indonesians have similar grievances against colonialism, they are entirely based upon their experience with Europeans (aside from brief exposure to Japan in WW2), they are even largely Muslim, they experience domestic unrest and local separatist movements,but this 5th most populous nation in the world has not produced nearly the same level of widespread radicalism and terrorist activity as has less populated Arab region. One glaring difference? No Israel analogue.
But all that aside, I again return to the OP’s suggestion: ending the state of war between Syria and Israel will most likely be seen as a bigger accomplishment for President Obama that will bringing down ObL. (Assuming this POTUS does oversee the end to that war.)
I’m telling you it comes back to what I said in an earlier thread.
Even though no one in the CW likes to admit it, they seem to buy into the idea that Obama has just been advantageous in a series of “lucky” breaks and somehow just “stumbles” into a position and ultimately getting what he originally wanted in the first place.
So of course Obama admin needed to be “saved” by Putin, of course Obama needed to be “saved” by Congress or whatever, because of course, he can’t possibly be actually employing any real skill.
It’s ridiculous.
right it’s no charm, it’s hard work
Yes, sometimes we forgot how hard the President, his administration, and other government officials actually work. We are many of us, and certainly the media, too vested in criticizing. Not critiquing, criticizing. Chris Hayes’ interview last evening with Lara Setrakian, a Syrian American and former journalist, was, for me, eye opening if only for making me realize anew that foreign policy and diplomacy are very difficult and that sometimes a President has to placate one constiutency domestically, but also appeal to another abroad. I’d include a link, but I honestly don’t know how to do that here.
Don’t forget that he also had to be “saved” by Kerry’s “gaffe”, which I have a hard time believing was totally unplanned.
But I agree with your comment. It’s a testament to the Prez’s control of his ego and sense of focus that he doesn’t seem to care so long as he gets the substantive outcomes he wants. And in fact he frequently uses people’s underestimation of him to his advantage (e.g. his signature “counterpunch” strategy).
There’s no saving and there’s no gaffe. It continues to astound me that people (including those whose alleged job it is to cover such things) don’t understand what a shambolic process diplomacy is. Sometimes people say things they don’t mean. Sometimes they have meaning forced on them. Sometimes they fuck up, sometimes they succeed. Sometimes they’re clever, sometimes they’re flying blind.
That it had to be explained that diplomats would broach the not-exactly secret problem of WMD stockpiles and weaponization and post-conflict proliferation since…the first fucking week the Assad government started shooting people is a stunning indictment of our civic critical thinking.
What, Russians and Americans would discuss Syria behind closed doors? For years? I thought they just shrieked and slung shit at each other like howler monkeys. It’s weird, it’s like our governments only selectively leak fractions of their day to day operations to the press. Next thing you’re gonna tell me is that they lie about things, too?!
I give the internet an F in International Relations 101 for this past couple of weeks. Russia and the United States are adversaries trying to disrupt each others’ strategic communications, isolate them geopolitically, exploit wedges amongst their respective alliances, weaken their resolve, and delay further destabilizing actions. All the while not coming into overt conflict. Making this about “Quien es mas macho?” is juvenile.
True dat. This shit is complicated.
Admittedly, simplistic explanations of American foreign relations were generally quite realistic during the Cheney administration.
Well part of being successful is to seize opportunities that come up as well as planning.
ok, I’m not trying to be snarky, or anything, but seriously, has there always been a “response” to EVERY DAMN Presidential speech given by a POTUS, or is this a new phenomenon?
I see Rand Paul is giving the “response”. Speaking of which, if this was actually Rubio and not an intern, then haha Rubio, well done…douche.
Is this on his own or on behalf of Republicans? Did Democrats deliver a response to Bush? What the fuck is up with all of these “responses”?
Just one more way to placate the party, that by God, must be in control of the levers of power at all times. And, when its not,it must be kowtowed to so that they can get back in the White House sooner rather than later. This move on their part pis… me off, lots.
Just roll some recent video of Michele Bachmann for comic relief. We could all use some.
I always appreciate how you can pack so much information about different perspectives in a short post. I look through a lot of articles about each situation, but you always pull it together for me.
As far as your question, I’ll raise my hand, Booman. He’s been negotiating with Putin, they’ve been sparring and the President hasn’t backed down. I think Putin knows he won’t. I remember the Cuban missile crisis and this does remind me of it. Nothing like have naval power parked off the coast to make a point.
It’s interesting to see how many times the media or pundits call POTUS lucky. I read your posts, Spanan C at The People’s View, Smartypants and Steve Benen at The Maddow Blog. I think Smartypants has the clearest understanding of him as a person, his strategy and thinking. And in understanding him it becomes easier to see how the action steps the press focus on fit with his strategy.
I’m happy about this, but Assad starting bombing again today. I thought from my reading that the surgical strike would have taken away some or all of his power to do that. It’s clear the President’s work regarding Syria and the Middle East has been ongoing and more will be to come.
This is insane. Your post could be overtaken by events within the hour (as have all the others for two weeks now). You have no effin’ idea what anybody on the world stage is actually planning.
The willingness of damn near everybody on twitter or blogs or tv to feverishly seize on every development as being the Absolute Key to Everything that solves the puzzle, and coincidentally happens to confirm everything they already believed, is pathetic. I shudder to think about how the Cuban missile crisis would have fared under similar coverage.
so nobody should write about anything until it’s “done”? When will Syria be “done”?
Yeah, you could wait and see how Russia actually acts at the UN before declaring peace in our time.
It’s a radical notion, I know.
But my cap is off to you, BooMan for another solid essay. At risk of opening old woulds I’ll just say that you are back on your game now that the rebels-gassed-themselves scenario is no longer sucking up too much of the oxygen in the room. That’s probably saying to much so I’ll shut up now.
I like Booman’s analysis too. Among other things, it has the virtue of being balanced. Here is another balanced analysis (by Jim Naureckas, author of Rush Limbaugh’s Reign of Error):
http://www.fair.org/blog/2013/09/01/which-syrian-chemical-attack-account-is-more-credible/
I skimmed it.
Echoes of 1962?
Putin Sets No-Attack Condition on Syrian Chemical Weapons Plan
Could be little more than a hiccup. Careful diplomatic language could solve the problem because the reality is that non-compliance is non-compliance. If Syria doesn’t follow through, then the deal is off. If Syria does some new outrage, that will be dealt with on its own merits.
Even if every explicit mention of force is removed from whatever document the UN ratifies, looming behind the entire development will the the implicit threat of a US strike if Assad tried to reneg. So let the diplomats arrange their face-saving wordings if that gets this propopsal running and successful!
You seem quite interested in observing failure by President Obama here. As much as I loather President Bush 43, I would prefer to have been wrong on Iraq than to see this nation so very weakened as it is by his failures.
I think that is very much the case. Analysis like this (besides the party analysis that you do) is why I keep reading here. And you conclusion about its near impossibility is exactly IMO why Syria is not Libya from a military tactics standpoint.
But it also shows the predisposition of the foreign policy establishment toward intervention. I think that is because the old hands in the foreign policy establishment were educated on the mistakes of the inter-war years, had their earliest experiences in the Cold War and just went through a decade of a “global war on terror”. Their frame has been the drive to dominate the total global frame lest bad things happen to the US. There is a bunch of lefty analysis of why that is, most of which IMO smacks of economic determinism and some of which amounts to endowing the power elite (to use C. Wright Mills’s term) with magical powers of planning an execution. Bureaucracies, and State and Defense above all are bureacracies, just don’t work that way. The President has to earn the formal obligation of obedience by those in the executive branch every day. Presidents do this by giving serious weight to what their advisers tell them and what their direct reports tell them.
Well that’s pretty commmonplace. Until you have a situation in which the world has changed, which I submit is what we are seeing in Syria. And it scrambles former allegiances and alliances. To some extent, the split in Congress over Syria is between old hands and young blood in both parties. But in the executive branch, experience reigns supreme and you have mostly the advice of old hands. The President likely was institutionally smart to start out from that position. But events in the world and in Congress proved that we are in a different geopolitical environment than we were even when the no-fly-zone in Libya was on the table.
I was struck tonight shopping and CNN had John Sciutto on. He viewed Vladimir Putin out of the old Soviet distrust framework. It was like we were still in the Cold War. Putin is a guy who thinks about his national security responsibilities to Russia like President Obama does about his. Both countries have historical sets of allies with whom they have had close relations for decades. Neither may particularly like the heads of state who happen to hold power in those countries that are allies, but they will stand by them because of US national interest, in the case of Obama, and Russian national interest in the case of Putin.
It is in Russia’s national interest to support Assad in Syria, or whoever the next regime in Syria is, in the same way that it is in the US interest in supporting Mubarak, then Morsi, the Sisi in Egypt. There are still some old hands in US foreign policy who think that what hurts Russia helps the US or what hurts Iran helps the US. My sense is that President Obama does not take this zero-sum view of foreign policy. My sense also is that the President honestly wants to reduced the presence of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons so as not to provide nations with ready means of extortion or non-state organizations with ready means of terror. I think that he would like to find a way to unwind the conflicts the suck the US into war in the Mideast, but is not ready to go head-on on the problems with Israel’s policies.
I don’t know who (or was it Obama’s own sense) thought that his “red line” statement was wise or that his and US credibility hinged majorly on it to the point of moving without adequate presentation to the public and the world of the particular evidence. Most likely the Clinton experience 1998 of attacking Saddam Hussein’s defense establishments to force UN inspections influenced the shape of the proposed actions since conventional wisdom says they were successful in actually deterring Saddam Hussein from restarting his WMD programs.
It was in Putin’s interest to throw the US a life ring to get out of a disastrous proof of US credibility. It is in Putin’s interest and Assad’s interest to get chemical weapons, a potential casus belli, out of Syria as quickly as possible. Chemical weapons in fact failed to do what the Syrian government by keeping them hoped it would do, whether deterrence or advantage. A quid pro quo presented itself. I don’t buy the idea that Kerry’s statement was kabuki; it was a direct threat and challenge. But it likely had a beneficial effect that was not anticipated precisely because of the expectations of old Russia hands at State. It is to the Obama team’s credit that they did not dismiss the offer out-of-hand; Dick Cheney would have.
We have here two world leaders who decided to seek a diplomatic solution. We’ve seen this in second terms before. Reagan and Gorbachev. And in both cases it is because the world has changed.
Russia is a competitor. Russia would certainly like to preserve the monopoly of Gazprom in Europe. And Russia would like not to have a potential US war in Iran near its southern border.
But Russia is also an observer at NATO that bridges relations between NATO and the Shanghai Cooperation Orgnanization, a key player in the coming stabilization of Afghanistan and Central Asia. And would like to expand good relations so that weapons in Europe are not longer aimed at Russia as a presumptive enemy. And Russia would welcome US normalization of relations with Iran.
The US however in the beginning of the post-Afghanistan period is potentially dangerous in that this is when the national security establishment and the public begin to try to identify the next enemy. The current conventional wisdom is that it is China. although ordinary Chinese seem to find that view very strange because they still look to US wealth and power.
The important thing for the US, Russia, Syria, and Iran is now the quick disposal of Syria’s inventory of chemical weapons and the disabling of its chemical weapons production facilities. There is fundamental agreement on that.
If it happens, all should share in the credit for sanity. It’s not magic. It is hard work and openness to a changed world order.
This is incorrect:
UNSCOM was in Iraq until Oct 1998:
Clinton sent in the bombers that December (while the House was voting on articles of impeachment).
And we know that this attack on Iraq along with the rational for it ended up being a prelude to a much larger attack with the same rationale.
My key words were “conventional wisdom”. I don’t know how much your history of UNSCOM has sunk into the old-line foreign policy hands who were involved in the attacks.
I still think that this image informs what the national security planners are thinking of as a limited strike that is not a pinprick.
I am repeatedly grateful that this country and my kids have this president.
This was a shit sandwich from the start and it looks like we may actually get the best available albeit imperfect outcome from it. And congress the Russians and many other players have been forced to do the right things and actually step up to their account abilities and accept the cant get everything (or in some cases anything) they want.
Sorry but that is the job he was elected to do.
Better than unilateral reckless decisions based on “principle” alone without regard to strategy, practicalities or actual benefit to the people we say we care about
.
Excellent, well balanced and credible statements by our President. PBO should have ended his presentation at 13:00 min., the rest was a redundancy where he put extra focus on the horror of Ghouta and puts repeated blame on the Assad regime. All images of war crimes from all sides in the civil war in Syria are horrific. The stream of hundreds of thousands of refugees who have fled destruction, bloodshed and murders are heart wrenching. The need for a political solution could have warranted more space in his speech. I’m glad the war rhetoric has diminished and I hear a clear intention and commitment for dialogue and diplomacy. A break with the rhetoric of our Minister of Propaganda just 24 hours earlier, NeoCon Susan Rice, she shames us all.
○ Mondoweiss and Another Blatent Kerry Lie Unmasked
○ AIPAC: Susan Rice Emerges As Pro-Israel Courter-In-Chief
○ Watch and listen to her presentation on September 9 why Syria’s chemical weapons are a risk to the US and is declared our National Security interest:
Susan Rice is not a “humanitarian hawk” but a true NeoCon