Tyr-Ziu Saxnot
09-11-2013, 03:35 PM
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/jacob-heilbrunn/obamas-divided-syria-speech-9044 -------------Obama's Divided Syria Speech
Jacob Heilbrunn
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September 11, 2013 --
3
Does President Obama want to go to war in Syria for Sasha and Malia? In his address last night, Obama repeatedly invoked the gassing of hundreds of children in Syria to make the case for military action. He indicated that countenancing the Syrian regime’s deployment of chemical weapons on August 21 would mean that Americans eventually might become the target of such attacks.
And he made the moral case for action. Obama was, in effect, admonishing Americans for their reluctance to intervene in the cauldron of religious and ethnic animosities that has transformed Syria from a repressive dictatorship into a country with violent factions trying to turn it back into a unified and repressive dictatorship. "What kind of world will we live in if the United States of America sees a dictator brazenly violate international law with poison gas and we choose to look the other way?" Obama said. At the same time, he acknowledged that America cannot serve as the "world's policeman." Just a neighborhood watch committee?
And so Obama's speech had a distinctly schizophrenic quality. The first half or so sounded like a call to arms. The other half not so much. Instead, it grudgingly accepted that maybe diplomacy is the way to go. Whether Obama wants to admit it or not, Russian president Vladimir Putin has offered him an out from political self-destruction. Obama may owe the rest of his presidency, which was headed for a cataclysmic defeat, not in Syria, where America could basically have bombed with impunity, but in Congress, where the president keeps succeeding in adding to his roster of adversaries, to Putin. This time it wasn't simply many Republican conservatives who were about to repudiate Obama; it was also the antiwar Democratic base that he emerged from when he originally denounced the Iraq war as a “dumb idea.”
What Obama’s speech exemplified, then, are the contradictions in his own administration over the past few weeks when it comes to Syria. Secretary John Kerry has been freelancing, coming up with the idea of Syria handing over its chemical weapons cache, which Moscow seized upon, in an off-hand remark. Obama, too, has been improvising—he blindsided Kerry and Defense Secretary Hagel in coming up with the notion of going to Congress for a Syria resolution. Obama would do well to think about a reset of his own foreign policy team. Has Obama been handed his head in a hat and fails to realize it? The next few weeks and what happens in Syria may reveal the answer. His speech last night showed he is a moral coward, a liar and conniving SOB IMHO..-Tyr
Jacob Heilbrunn
|
September 11, 2013 --
3
Does President Obama want to go to war in Syria for Sasha and Malia? In his address last night, Obama repeatedly invoked the gassing of hundreds of children in Syria to make the case for military action. He indicated that countenancing the Syrian regime’s deployment of chemical weapons on August 21 would mean that Americans eventually might become the target of such attacks.
And he made the moral case for action. Obama was, in effect, admonishing Americans for their reluctance to intervene in the cauldron of religious and ethnic animosities that has transformed Syria from a repressive dictatorship into a country with violent factions trying to turn it back into a unified and repressive dictatorship. "What kind of world will we live in if the United States of America sees a dictator brazenly violate international law with poison gas and we choose to look the other way?" Obama said. At the same time, he acknowledged that America cannot serve as the "world's policeman." Just a neighborhood watch committee?
And so Obama's speech had a distinctly schizophrenic quality. The first half or so sounded like a call to arms. The other half not so much. Instead, it grudgingly accepted that maybe diplomacy is the way to go. Whether Obama wants to admit it or not, Russian president Vladimir Putin has offered him an out from political self-destruction. Obama may owe the rest of his presidency, which was headed for a cataclysmic defeat, not in Syria, where America could basically have bombed with impunity, but in Congress, where the president keeps succeeding in adding to his roster of adversaries, to Putin. This time it wasn't simply many Republican conservatives who were about to repudiate Obama; it was also the antiwar Democratic base that he emerged from when he originally denounced the Iraq war as a “dumb idea.”
What Obama’s speech exemplified, then, are the contradictions in his own administration over the past few weeks when it comes to Syria. Secretary John Kerry has been freelancing, coming up with the idea of Syria handing over its chemical weapons cache, which Moscow seized upon, in an off-hand remark. Obama, too, has been improvising—he blindsided Kerry and Defense Secretary Hagel in coming up with the notion of going to Congress for a Syria resolution. Obama would do well to think about a reset of his own foreign policy team. Has Obama been handed his head in a hat and fails to realize it? The next few weeks and what happens in Syria may reveal the answer. His speech last night showed he is a moral coward, a liar and conniving SOB IMHO..-Tyr