Syria: US President Fails To Convince Congress and the Public

After considerably hesitating, zigzagging, rejecting and weighing aloud the pros and cons of his politics in Syria for 10 days, Barack Obama has created much confusion among his compatriots and elected members of Congress about his true intentions.

When he spoke on Tuesday night to call on the country not to turn its eyes away from the massacre of children who were gassed in Syria, he announced the exceptional role of America as the “anchor of global security” and discussed the necessity of continuing to bear this burden; his words fell into an abyss of indifference and of ironic skepticism.

America, who followed George W. Bush into Iraq with enthusiasm, has had enough of messianism and of wars that it does not understand. “I really like the president, and I am very much in agreement with the fact that Bashar is a dictator and that the chemical warfare massacre must be punished. But my constituents are tired of war and I am still not convinced that what happened in Syria is in our best national interest,” said Maryland representative Elijah Cummings, an African-American Democrat.* A CNN poll taken just after the speech revealed that more than 60 percent of Americans agree with Cummings.

Throughout the media, who are just as skeptical, the presidential speech was thrashed for its contradictions and for its total absence of information on what path Obama is planning on taking, if the diplomatic “rabbit” that came out of Putin’s hat ultimately turns out to be a farce. In the Politico newspaper, John Harris saw in the speech an example of Obama’s zigzags and incoherence, describing the “zig” as his calls for diplomacy and his “zag” as calls for war. “Does the president from Red Square really want to rescue the president who stumbled over the red line?” Maureen Dowd wondered in The New York Times, calling the president’s politics “amateur hour.” Reflecting widespread worries in Washington about the Kremlin’s hidden agenda, Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, who have always been much harder than the president has on the use of force — notably on the issue of moderated help to the opposition — were surprised that Obama did not define a clear plan, aiming to test the seriousness of the Russian and Syrian propositions. The question of the feasibility of putting Assad’s chemical weapons under control in the midst of a fierce civil war is now on the front page of every newspaper.

Grandiloquent Rhetoric

Commentators’ criticisms also affect Obama’s ability to remain credible. The fact that he drew a “red line” and announced his strikes, and then finally decided to defer to Congress and then Putin, appears to many to be a position of “extreme weakness.”

All noted the concerning gap between Obama’s grandiloquent rhetoric on the issues (comparisons to the Holocaust, to Rwanda) and his hesitation.

In reality, nobody is fooled by the threat of using force, deemed by Obama to be a key element of the negotiation. Obama is largely diminished by his obvious incapability of convincing members of Congress. The president had to go to the Capitol on Tuesday to request the postponement of a vote on the authorization of the military strike, “because he knew that he would not have the votes. Going to the negotiation with Putin after having suffered the blow of Congress would have been catastrophic,” explained a Republican to Le Figaro. But the dilemma of a military strike could quickly knock again at the door of the White House and Congress, if Kerry returns empty-handed from Geneva. Despite all of the skepticism from outside observers, Obama’s speech indicates that he is ready to pull the trigger if diplomacy fails. “After tonight’s speech, there is no other right answer,” said Senator Lindsey Graham. “If there is a crack in Syria’s credibility, I have no doubt that the U.S. will take military action,” said Israeli President Shimon Peres. Washington’s commentators seem to have their doubts. But the real question is what Assad is thinking.

*Editor’s Note: This quote, accurately translated, could not be verified in its entirety.