Fred Kaplan: Obama's Gamble: Seeking congressional approval for Syria strike was risky and right

[flpoljunkie]

Obama’s Gamble
Seeking congressional approval for his Syria strike was risky and right.

By Fred Kaplan|Posted Saturday, Aug. 31, 2013, at 3:49 PM

President Obama is taking a monumental gamble with his Rose Garden statement on war with Syria, but it’s a worthwhile one.

In recent days he and Secretary of State John Kerry have made a powerful case that Bashar al-Assad’s regime launched the chemical weapons that killed more than 1,000 civilians in a suburb of Damascus. All 16 U.S. intelligence agencies have said, in a special report, that they have “high confidence” in this assessment.

Obama has also made a strong case that a military response is the proper action—not in order to get involved in the Syrian civil war (which he has said we cannot affect with force alone) or to oust Assad from power (though that may be a side effect), but rather to enforce a long-standing global prohibition on the use of chemical weapons.

However, this rationale for military strikes (which I agree with) puts him in a box. The organizations charged with enforcing international law are not joining in the attack. The U.N. Security Council is “paralyzed,” as Obama said in today’s speech, because Russia will certainly veto any resolution to use force. In the 1999 Kosovo crisis, President Clinton, also faced with Russian recalcitrance, turned to NATO as the entity to launch a massive air campaign. Obama’s aides cited Kosovo as a possible model when they floated the idea of a strike several days ago, but the British Parliament’s refusal to authorize force precludes the NATO option as well. Many members of the Arab League support American action against Assad, but they are unlikely to take a formal position either.

more...

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/war_stories/2013/08/obama_s_syria_speech_his_decision_to_seek_congressional_approval_for_his.html

[gopiscrap]

1. I agree

[zipplewrath]

2. The very first question

You heard it at the end of the statement when someone asked something to the effect of; What will you do if you don't get authorization from congress?

[libdem4life]

3. He is about to be in-person on the international stage...to act militarily without the UK, the UN,

NATO, the US Congress or the Arabs had little upside.

[KoKo]

4. So this is what Fred Kaplan Really Thinks??? Excerpt

"There will be lessons noted from Iraq, and I suspect the authorization will impose limits on the duration and perhaps the scope of military action. Some will complain that these limits constrain the president, but in fact they free him. Who knows? Maybe we will learn—contrary to the experience of the past decade—that a democracy can go to war in a full and open vote without deceit."