US News

Obama backs away from ‘red line’ on Syria

WASHINGTON — President Obama took an eraser to his famous invocation of a “red line” on Syria.

Seeking to depersonalize his plan for an airstrike against the Syrian regime for using chemical weapons, Obama said the red line isn’t “something I kind of made up. I didn’t pluck it out of thin air.”

With proponents arguing Obama has to make good on his warnings against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Obama tried to spread the blame.

“My credibility is not on the line. The international community’s credibility is on the line. And America and Congress’s credibility is on the line,” he said at a press conference in Sweden, where he stopped on his way to the G-20 summit today in St. Petersburg, Russia.

“I didn’t set a red line,” he said. “The world set a red line when governments representing 98 percent of the world’s population said the use of chemical weapons are abhorrent and passed a [1993] treaty forbidding their use even when countries are engaged in war.” Obama then made the case for a military strike. “Are we going to try to find a reason not to act? And if that’s the case, then I think the world community should admit it,” he said.

Back in DC, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee passed a resolution by a 10-7 vote authorizing the use of force in a “limited and tailored manner.” It now heads to the Senate floor. In a sign of trouble in the House, five out of seven Republicans on the committee voted nay, including rising stars Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.). Two Democrats voted no, and one abstained.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who has said it would be “catastrophic” if the US failed to respond to Syria, backed the resolution after winning changes stating that its US policy to try to degrade the regime’s military and try to force a negotiated settlement.

Testifying in the House, Secretary of State John Kerry warned: “If we back down, if the world backs down, we have sent an unmistakable message of permissiveness.”