Last night President Obama delivered a detailed and passionate case to strike Syria after chemical weapons attacks against their own people – even though the Syrian government promised to accept a proposal to surrender the weapons to the U.N.
But in true president form, Obama stuck to his war guns, made his case, but offered to delay the strike to review the plan proposed by the Russians.
If you recall, the Russian foreign minister urged Syria to give up control of the chemical warfare just a day before Obama was scheduled to deliver his case, which was originally supposed to be a call to arms. Instead, this is what Obama said.
“It’s too early to tell whether this offer will succeed, and any agreement must verify that the Assad regime keeps its commitments,” Mr. Obama said. “But this initiative has the potential to remove the threat of chemical weapons without the use of force.”
But before he proposed the delay, Obama reminded the American people of the atrocities occurring just an ocean away.
“The images from this massacre are sickening,” Mr. Obama said, “Men, women, and children lying in rows, killed by poison gas, others foaming at mouth, gasping for breath, a father clutching his dead children, imploring them to get up and walk.”
Mr. Obama also framed his case in political terms. He asked those on the right to reconcile their commitment to America’s military might with a failure to act now. And he asked those on the left to reconcile their belief in freedom and dignity “with those images of children writhing in pain and going still on a cold hospital floor.”
“For sometimes,” he said, “resolutions and statements of condemnation are not enough.”
To prevent a war or a situation similar to Iraq and Afghanistan, he asked Congressional leaders to postpone a vote authorizing military action, which according to the New York Times is a vote he was almost certain to lose — even while making the moral case for punishing Syria for its deadly use of chemical weapons.
We’ll keep you updated on the latest.
SOURCE: NYT
