Obama’s dilemma on US strike
THE US moved to the brink of taking military action against Syria as President Barack Obama said Bashar al-Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons was “a challenge to the world” that presented a danger to US national security.
As United Nations chemical weapons inspectors left Damascus on Friday, clearing the ground for limited strikes, US spy agencies released their most detailed assessment of the chemical attack, accusing the Syrian government of murdering nearly 1 500 people, including over 400 children.
Russian President Vladimir Putin dismissed as “nonsense’’ claims that the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons and demanded that the US provide proof.
Putin said if Obama had evidence that Assad’s forces had the chemical weapons and launched the attack, Washington should present it to the UN weapons inspectors and the Security Council.
“I am convinced that it [the chemical attack] is nothing more than a provocation by those who want to drag other countries into the Syrian conflict,” Putin said.
Although Obama insisted that he had not yet made a decision to strike, US naval vessels continued to mass off the Syrian coast before what is ex- pected to be a brief bombardment with cruise missiles.
The White House has said it is prepared to move ahead without military support from Britain, Nato or the UN, but any action would be limited.
Ruling out “boots on the ground”, Obama said he was considering a “limited, narrow act” that would deter future chemical weapons use by Syria or any other country.
“This kind of attack is a challenge to the world. We cannot accept a world where women and children and innocent civilians are gassed on a terrible scale,” he said.
Years ago, Obama chastised George W Bush for a “cowboy” foreign policy, an “imperial” presidency, alienating allies and taking the US into war with cooked intelligence.
Now he wants Americans to again trust intelligence on weapons of mass destruction, despite the CIA’s credibility being marred by its botched “slam-dunk” case for war in Iraq.
And after once promising to go to war only with an international coalition and with backing from Congress, he stands almost alone, dumped by his closest ally, Britain, and is snubbing the UN and bucking public opinion.
His main military ally is France, the target of endless bile from Americans when it rejected Bush’s invitation to help invade Iraq.
“Iraq has so fundamentally shattered the trust the American people have in the president when it comes to war and peace that it makes doing the right thing frankly much harder,” said a former senior Obama national security aide.
Obama said on Friday that he knew Americans were tired of conflict abroad.
“Nobody ends up being more war-weary than me,” he said.
But Secretary of State John Kerry said “fatigue does not absolve us of our responsibility”.
Obama has seen his preference for a UN-endorsed mission to punish Assad’s regime thwarted by a recalcitrant Russia, and the usual double act with “special-relationship” buddy Britain dashed by the House of Commons.
“I’ve shown consistently my strong preference for multilateral action whenever possible,” Obama said on Friday.
But he added that the USmay have to act alone, if necessary, to enshrine the principle that chemical weapons must not be used in a way that could endanger US allies and national security.
“A lot of people think something should be done, but nobody wants to do it,” he said.
Obama’s credibility is in question because he declared that the use of a “whole bunch” of chemical weapons by Assad would cross a US red line.
Kerry appeared to implicitly acknowledge that view on Friday, saying the world was watching what the US would do in Syria.
“They are watching to see if Syria can get away with it . . . It is about Iran . . . It is about Hezbollah and North Korea.” — Sapa-AFP