President Obama will not insist on a United Nations resolution threatening the use of force against Syria if Damascus does not turn over its stockpile of chemical weapons, according to reports.
The White House telegraphed the president’s strategy Friday amid ongoing negotiations between the U.S. and Russia over a proposal to disarm Syria strongman Bashar Assad’s chemical arsenal to avert a threatened American military strike.
According to the reports from the Associated Press and New York Times, Obama is not ruling out a military strike. The president though believes that any resolution including such language would be vetoed by Russia on the Security Council. The president will reserve the right to strike Assad without UN support if Syria fails to follow through and hand over its chemical weapons.
Administration officials would not directly confirm the reports to the Washington Examiner.
Instapundit , Washington Examiner
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207 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 207 of 207edutcher said...
Ritmo thinks he's witty.
Get a job!
Have you noticed that ed and his little clone icepick, are both unemployed? That would interefere with their online time.
Trooper, she can't help it. All that box wine rots the soul as well as the mind. Also note that she thinks we and I are clones, even though we're always arguing with each other.
And did ritmo really claim Obama doesn't Assad gone? That is why the Administration is arming and training the rebels, right?
Thinks ED and I are clones.
Icepick, it's true that I can't claim Obama doesn't want Assad gone and isn't arming rebels. It's true that I can't claim that and it's true that I agree it would be bad if he were fixing to rid Syria of Assad and even worse if he were arming the rebels. Sometimes the CIA mucks things up with its own autonomy. But that doesn't mean I should prevent him from pushing for their joining the CWC because of it. That just doesn't follow. By all means, I am more than ready to see Obama criticized, castigated, called an idiot, impeached, what have you if he were to meddle with the Syrian leadership or use the rebels to agitate against it. And that's the difference - I simply refuse to see how getting the leadership to behave more morally and more responsibly is a bad thing, regardless of what comes next or what happens with their leadership structure. What's so wrong with that? Why take the crazy position of encouraging them to be a rogue state vis-a-vis the CWC and to commit atrocious acts... because of the favoritism of sides? How does that follow in any way?
Somehow it's taken as Gospel here that we can make Putin look bad by allowing Syria to use almost universally banned weapons against civilian populations, and that absolutely ludicrous and insane position is being given precedence over everything. It makes no sense.
Ritmo, we are agitating to have the current leadership of Syria removed. We are doing this with the HOPE that what comes next will be better. We are doing this with a coalition that includes very bad people, from a US perspective. We have seen in the past, even the recent past, that 'moderates' tend to lose out to extremists after a successful revolution.
If the goal is securing chemical weapons, then trying to topple the Assad regime without putting together a coalition of forces LED by the US military is a recipe for disaster. Or have you already forgotten what happened in Libya and Egypt?
I don't understand what kind of a world you expect to live in, in which revolutions are surgically sterile. Not all of them involve removing a foreign occupier, as the U.S. revolution did. Internal revolutions are usually messy. Did you forget what Don Rumsfeld said about freedom being messy?
Nor are they usually preventable, nor is it desirable usually to seek to prevent them. Mubarak and Qaddafi stifled political expression and tortured dissenters - not our interest to tell their people they have no right to replace them. Neither did chemical weapons have anything to do with either. Qaddafi'd already given up chemical weapons eight years earlier -- so he'd had that long to learn how to treat his people right or get the fuck out of Dodge.
If you have evidence that we are agitating to change the leadership of Syria, provide it. Did every instance of acceding to the CWC, all 189 of them, involve regime change? Is the U.S. constitutional regime about to be supplanted given our status as a signatory? Is Russia's?
You have given no reason for not pushing for their acceptance of the treaty, other than to say that Qaddafi's signing happened eight years before he was deposed. This is a flimsy connection to anything having to do with Syria and your connecting the two is arbitrary. We did not agitate for the removal of Qaddafi in 2004, either. He made his own removal from power inevitable all on his own, for reasons having nothing to do with chemical weapons. The people did not care about his possession of those weapons or his lack thereof. They removed him anyway, as is their right. It was a political grievance they had, and luckily now they oversee a regime that's chemical weapons free - unless you'd prefer they retrieve them.
There is still no logic to the line of argumentation.
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