WASHINGTON — President Obama laid out his strongest case for US military action in Syria Tuesday night — even as he talked up the prospect of a new initiative he said could eliminate chemical weapons there “without the use of force.”
Addressing the nation in a prime-time address on a day filled with fast-moving diplomacy, Obama pointed to “encouraging signs” of progress as well as “constructive talks” with Russian President Vladimir Putin that appear to have prodded Syria into announcing it will give up its chemical weapons.
“It is too early to tell whether this offer will succeed,” Obama said.
But after a week where US policy sometimes appeared to zigzag by the hour, Obama made a robust argument for intervention if necessary — saying a failure to act would “embolden” Iran and threaten key US allies Israel and Turkey.
Obama said he’d asked leaders in Congress to postpone a vote on military action “while we pursue this diplomatic path.” The latest vote counts on Capitol Hill showed the vote was in big trouble — even before the latest diplomatic movement.
He said he was dispatching Secretary of State John Kerry to meet his Russian counterpart in Geneva on Thursday to discuss a possible solution, and said he would “continue my own discussions with President Putin.”
With polls showing huge margins of Americans opposing intervention, Obama made an emotional appeal for action with a patriotic call to arms, while also arguing that US national-security interests were on the line.
“America is not the world’s policeman,” Obama declared. “Terrible things happen across the globe, and it is beyond our means to right every wrong.
“But when, with modest effort and risk, we can stop children from being gassed to death, and thereby make our own children safer over the long run, I believe we should act. That’s what makes America different. That’s what makes us exceptional.”
He urged Americans to view gruesome videos of writhing victims of the Aug. 21 sarin gas attack near Damascus, an atrocity allegedly committed by President Bashar al-Assad’s forces against rebel strongholds.
“The images from this massacre are sickening: Men, women, children lying in rows, killed by poison gas,” Obama recounted. “Others foaming at the mouth, gasping for breath.”
He went point by point to answer naysayers against what was shaping up to be a nearly unilateral action:
He acknowledged the nation was “sick and tired of war” and vowed not to pursue “a prolonged war or campaign like Libya or Kosovo,” referring to US-backed air efforts.
Taking on critics in Congress who said the US response would be a mere pin prick, Obama intoned: “The United States military doesn’t do pin pricks.”
He also pledged, “I will not put American boots on the ground in Syria.”
He argued that Assad didn’t have the ability hit back at the US military, and that any other retaliation against the United States was in line with “threats that we face every day.”
A nagging concern among policymakers is that a robust US strike could actually leave a power vacuum and ultimately boost rebels who have been infiltrated by extremists.
“Al Qaeda will only draw strength in a more chaotic Syria if people there see the world doing nothing to prevent innocent civilians from being gassed to death,” Obama argued.
Before his much-anticipated televised address Tuesday night, Obama urged key senators to keep the military option “on the table.”
Obama admitted the “polls were against” the strikes and he would not be able to change that with his speech from the White House East Room.
“I’m good, but not that good,” he told one group of senators, according to Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.).
Earlier in the day, two influential Republicans, Minority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), came out against military action.
In his speech, Obama defended his decision to go to Congress to authorize military action, despite the lack of support.
“I believed it was right, in the absence of a direct or imminent threat to our security, to take this debate to Congress,” he said.
Obama, a Nobel Peace Prize recipient who ended the Iraq war even as he took unmanned drone attacks to unprecedented levels, presented himself to the nation as an anti-war president.
“I know Americans want all of us in Washington — especially me — to concentrate on the task of building our nation here at home,” he said.
Obama originally planned the speech to sell America on the attack on the eve of a critical vote in the Senate.
But everything changed Monday, when Secretary of State John Kerry said in a London news conference that Assad could dodge a US bombing campaign by turning “over every single bit of his chemical weapons to the international community in the next week.”
The State Department initially downplayed Kerry’s remarks as diplomatic shooting from the hip. An anonymous administration official termed it a “major goof.”
But on Tuesday, after the Kremlin signaled support, Kerry took credit. “I didn’t misspeak,” he told a House panel.