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Addressing the nation from the East Room last night, President Obama methodically made his case for a military strike on Syria. The gruesome images from the August 21 gassing in Syria had shown the world the “terrible nature of chemical weapons.” If the U.S. doesn’t respond, Bashar al-Assad and others like him “will have no reason to think twice” about using such weapons, and it will become easier for terrorists to obtain them. We wouldn’t be heading into another war; we’d only be making “a targeted strike to achieve a clear objective.”
This was like a teacher emphasizing the significance of an imminent test, and convincing students of the need for hours of study—and then announcing he was putting it off.
Second, even if this diplomatic initiative somehow ends the chemical threat, “Syria will be no closer to the fall of Assad or to his negotiated departure,” Packer notes. “The killing will go on. Death by gas might be taken off the table, but children and other human beings, by the thousands, will still be pulverized in indiscriminate shelling and burned to death by incendiary devices.”
