Explain the decision-making process of Obama during the Syrian crisis of August-Spetember 2013 (The issue of Chemical weapons, the red line)

Obama says U.S. will take military action against Syria, pending Congress’s approval

By Ernesto Londoño, Published: August 31

President Obama put on hold Saturday a plan to attack Syria for its alleged use of chemical weapons, arguing that the United States had a moral responsibility to respond forcefully but would not do so until Congress has a chance to vote on the use of military force.

The announcement puts off a cruise missile strike that had appeared imminent, a prospect that had the region on edge and stoked intense debate in the United States, where many dread getting dragged into a new war.

Obama did not indicate what he would do if Congress rejects the measure.

Lawmakers are scheduled to return from recess on Sept. 9to begin what is sure to be a contentious debate about the risks of injecting the United

States into a conflict in which it has few reliable allies and enemies on both sides of the front lines. The Senate will hold committee hearings on the proposed strike this week, Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) announced Saturday.

The decision to seek congressional approval for what the administration has said would be a short, limited engagement was a remarkable turn one day after Secretary of State John F. Kerry delivered an almost-prosecutorial case for military intervention. Obama made the decision Friday night following days of agonizing deliberations with members of his Cabinet, according to administration officials.

Shifting the burden to Congress potentially gives the president a way out of the political bind he created last year when he said Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons would be a “red line” for the United States. It also buys the administration time to shore up domestic and international support for a strike that many came to see as a hasty response with potentially catastrophic consequences.

The decision could work in Assad’s favor, giving him more time to prepare for an attack that could ultimately become politically untenable for Obama.

Obama argued Saturday that the United States would be setting a dangerous precedent if it did not respond to the Aug. 21 attack in a Damascus suburb, which U.S. intelligence officials say killed nearly 1,500 civilians, including 426 children.

“This attack is an assault on human dignity,” Obama said in an impassioned afternoon address in the White House Rose Garden. “It also presents a serious danger to our national security. . . . It could lead to escalating use of chemical weapons, or their proliferation to terrorist groups who would do our people harm.”

Some members of Congress applauded Obama’s move, a strikingly unusual one in presidential history, particularly for a leader who has been

criticized for dodging congressional oversight. The president does not need congressional approval for limited military interventions, and the executive branch has not sought it in the past.

“At this point in our country’s history, this is absolutely the right decision, and I look forward to seeing what the administration brings forward and to a vigorous debate on this important authorization,” said Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.).

Others chided the president, saying he was setting a troubling precedent on the presidential prerogative to use of military force.

“President Obama is abdicating his responsibility as commander-in-chief and undermining the authority of future presidents,” said Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.), who favors a military strike. “The president doesn’t need 535 members of Congress to enforce his own red line.”

A measure authorizing a strike would seem to have a good chance of passing in the Senate, where the Democratic majority will likely be backed by influential Republicans who favor U.S. military intervention. It is expected to be a tougher sell in the House, where both war-weary liberals and conservative and libertarian Republicans have argued that the best of bad options is to avoid the temptation to use military force. It was difficult to predict on Saturday how the debate might unfold.

“Here’s my question for every member of Congress and every member of the global community: What message will we send if a dictator can gas hundreds of children to death in plain sight and pay no price?” Obama asked.

The president said it would be seen a green light for adversaries seeking to build nuclear weapons and terrorist groups that got access to biological weapons. “Make no mistake — this has implications beyond chemical warfare,” he said.

After telegraphing in recent days that an attack with Tomahawk cruise

missiles launched from U.S. Navy destroyers in the eastern Mediterranean was imminent, Obama sought Saturday to make the case that time is not of the essence.

Obama said the Pentagon is “prepared to strike whenever we choose,” but the formal decision was “not time-sensitive” and could come “tomorrow, or next week or one month from now.” Officials have said they planned an intense, short barrage that they hoped would deter Assad from using chemical weapons again.

Delaying the attack will allow Obama to travel to St. Petersburg for a Group of 20 meeting next week without the military operation dominating the news. Russia continues to back Assad and has warned against a U.S. strike.

As the congressional debate unfolds, the administration is likely to continue to seek support abroad. After the British parliament voted last week against intervention and the Arab League refused to back a strike, an administration that has placed a high premium on international coalitions found itself virtually alone, with only France offering to participate.

“I think part of this is the president started to read the tea leaves: There isn’t a lot of support for this, growing questions from Congress, and questions about our Syria policy that should have been answered a long time ago,” said Juan C. Zarate, a senior analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies who served as a top adviser to President George W. Bush. “With all that, he grew to doubt our ability to act with legitimacy.”

Administration officials have struggled to answer a fundamental question: If the strike was not aimed at chemical weapons sites — because hitting them could result in extensive collateral damage — what was the military objective of targeting other sites? Syria’s alleged chemical attack also added urgency to the policy debate over whether the

United States should be seeking Assad’s ouster even though Islamist rebels affiliated with al-Qaeda form a major part of the opposition forces.

After the president’s speech, senior administration officials began a new push to garner support for military action. Kerry called Ahmad al-Jarba, president of the Syrian Opposition Coalition, to “underscore President Obama’s commitment to holding the Assad regime accountable for its chemical weapons attack,” the State Department said in a statement. Kerry also spoke with his counterparts in Japan and Saudi Arabia.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were scheduled to speak to lawmakers Saturday.

The White House did not detail the scope of the request for authorization of military force it will submit to Congress, but there was no sign it is weighing more robust action.

“I know well that we are weary of war,” Obama said. “The American people have the good sense to know we cannot resolve the underlying conflict in Syria with our military.”

The ghosts of the U.S. war in Iraq war a decade ago have loomed large in the debate over whether to attack Syria. Iraq’s ambassador to Washington, Lukman Faily, said his country will not support a strike, mindful of the U.S. military’s troubled legacy in his country.

“We as a government and a people are not advocating a military solution,” Faily said. “We as a people have seen the results of such strikes without a clarity of the day after.”

Anne Gearan and Scott Wilson contributed to this report.

Syria debate in Oval Office focused on whether to put a military strike before Congress

By Scott Wilson, Sunday, September 1, 2:01 AM

President Obama campaigned for office as a critic of the Bush administration’s lack of regard for international consensus to resolve the most pressing issues of the day — whether climate change or the invasion of Iraq.

And yet, after a week of discussions over evidence showing that the government of President Bashar al-Assad had used chemical weapons, Obama was believed by some of his closest aides to be willing to launch a military strike against Syria — even if his administration lacked the support of the United States’ closest ally, Britain, and the authorization of Congress. It would amount to perhaps the weightiest and riskiest solo action by Obama since his decision to approve the raid that killed Osama bin Laden in 2011.

At 7 p.m. Friday, a handful of Obama’s closest aides, including national security adviser Susan E. Rice and White House chief of staff Denis McDonough, were summoned to the Oval Office, according to senior administration officials. The president had concluded he would allow a

sharply divided and generally hostile Congress to debate whether the United States should proceed.

It was not the decision some of Obama’s advisers, including Rice and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel — who were said to be among the officials in favor of a missile barrage against Assad’s military assets in the coming days — were expecting to hear.

After two hours of debate, however, Obama was not dissuaded in his determination to have Congress debate the issue.

“While I believe I have the authority to carry out this military action without specific congressional authorization, I know that the country will be stronger if we take this course, and our actions will be even more effective,” the president said Saturday in an address in the Rose Garden. “We should have this debate, because the issues are too big for business as usual.”

Senior administration officials, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal deliberations, said the debate late Friday focused on the possible consequences of introducing a proudly obstructionist Congress into an urgent foreign policy issue, the implications of ceding executive authority over war powers to the legislative branch, and the risks of not setting a time frame for a U.S. military strike.

Aides said the president believes strongly that the Assad government was behind the use of chemical weapons that killed almost 1,500 people — nearly a third of them children — and that it needs to face consequences. But they added that the issue for the president is not solely about a humanitarian crisis, but also about containing chemical weapons.

“The situation we’re presented with is not a principally humanitarian interest,” said Ben Rhodes, the deputy national security adviser for strategic communication. “We have not turned to military action for a variety of reasons in Syria, in part because we didn’t think military

action would help the humanitarian situation.”

But Rhodes added that Obama, who has made restricting the spread of chemical and nuclear weapons a chief policy priority, assesses that taking action in Syria will also further his goal to limit the use of illicit weapons that pose a serious threat to U.S. national security interests.

Late Friday afternoon, the president walked around the South Lawn grounds with McDonough, a ritual of the restless chief of staff. Obama and his aides had spent a week discussing what to do, poring over gruesome intelligence gathered in the Damascus suburbs.

The president told McDonough, a Capitol Hill veteran, that he wanted Congress to draft new authorization of military force against the Syrian government and have the value and limitations of any military action put up for a vote on the merits.

Obama told McDonough two reasons for his approach to enlist Congress in any strike against Syria. He wanted there to be political accountability — lawmakers from both parties, he believed, should be on the record in support or against the war. Obama told advisers that congressional support, far from certain, given the animosity that extends the length of Pennsylvania Avenue, would ultimately strengthen support for the war and perhaps protect public opinion for a sustained operation.

The other reason? Unlike the U.S.-led military operation in Libya in 2011 — which was supported by the U.N. Security Council and the Arab League — the United States did not have the same level of international backing.

Obama’s proposal to invite Congress dominated the Friday discussion in the Oval Office. He had consulted almost no one about his idea. In the end, the president made clear he wanted Congress to share in the responsibility for what happens in Syria.

As one aide put it, “We don’t want them to have their cake and eat it, too.”

As Obama takes Syria decision to Congress, approval for attack is far from clear-cut

By Paul Kane and Ed O’Keefe, Sunday, September 1, 1:20 AM

President Obama’s announcement Saturday that he will seek congressional approval for a possible attack on Syria sets the stage for the most tumultuous foreign policy debate on Capitol Hill in more than a decade.

And already, an unlikely alliance between tea party conservatives and veteran liberal doves, as well as the memory of the Iraq war debate, has cast doubt on whether the president can mobilize enough support in the country and in Congress to persuade lawmakers to approve even a limited attack in Syria.

After Obama’s decision Saturday to seek congressional approval for the military action, House and Senate leaders began laying the groundwork for votes on the use of military force in response for the suspected use of

chemical weapons by the Syrian government.

The Senate will hold committee hearings this coming week and a full debate and vote the following week, Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) announced Saturday evening, while the House plans to stick to its original schedule of returning Sept. 9 and deliberating the use-of-force request that week. Much of the mechanics of the debate and the exact nature of the request remained unclear; Obama did not inform congressional leaders of his decision until Saturday morning.

Lawmakers and aides suggested that the president could face an uphill fight in winning approval in both chambers, particularly in the House. There, the Democratic caucus is dominated by liberal veterans who are still bitter about the passage of the 2002 Iraq war resolution based on faulty intelligence of Saddam Hussein’s ultimately nonexistent stockpiles of chemical weapons, and the House GOP caucus has an increasingly potent wing of isolationist lawmakers wary of overseas entanglements.

Even Republicans who have worked closely with Obama on foreign policy and fiscal issues in recent months warned that his administration had hard work ahead.

“Now that the president has decided to use force and seek authorization, it is imperative that he immediately begins using every ounce of his energy to make his case to the American people,” said Sen. Bob Corker (Tenn.), who is the top Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee and is generally supportive of a strike.

Geared up for fiscal debates

The debate, which is certain to be emotional on both sides, comes as Congress is supposed to begin a heated faceoff on fiscal matters. Leaders hope to pass an interim spending bill by Sept. 30 to keep the federal government operating, while facing another deadline a few weeks after that to lift the Treasury’s borrowing authority, or else risk a default on

the nation’s $16.7 trillion debt. The White House and leading Senate Republicans, including Corker, declared an impasse late last week on those fiscal talks.

The request for congressional approval followed calls from both sides of the partisan aisle for a vote similar to the one held last week in Britain, where Parliament voted down Prime Minister David Cameron’s request to join U.S. forces in a strike in Syria.

By the end of the week more than 140 House members, including more than 20 Democrats, had signed a letter drafted by Rep. Scott Rigell (R-Va.) demanding that Obama get congressional approval before launching any action.

A different letter demanding debate before a strike, penned by Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), the leading anti-war liberal, gained more than 60 Democratic signatures.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has emerged as the strongest supporter of Obama’s plan. “Military action in response to Assad’s reckless use of deadly gas that is limited in scope and duration, without boots on the ground, is in our national security interest and in furtherance of regional stability and global security,” Pelosi said in a statement, referring to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Pelosi has demonstrated an ability to deliver votes when the Obama administration has needed them, but other Democrats said Syria will be a tougher sell because many still feel stung by the Iraq war votes 11 years ago.

“The shadow of Iraq is the dominant influence for most members,” said Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (D-Va.). Connolly said he is also concerned with historic parallels to massacres in the 1990s that did not get a forceful response. “Syria is not Iraq, and Obama is not Bush,” he said. “No one is contemplating an invasion of Syria. The appropriate analogies are Bosnia-Kosovo-Serbia and Rwanda. The tug of historical

analogies is a powerful force in foreign policy.”

House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) and his top lieutenants issued a noncommittal statement, praising the president for allowing Congress to weigh in but not assuring how they would vote.

House members have been invited to a classified briefing in the Capitol on Sunday, when they can review more-detailed intelligence about the Syrian attacks than they have received in a series of conference calls with administration officials in recent weeks. It is unclear how many lawmakers will be able to make it back to Washington on short notice for the intelligence briefing.

Clearer path in Senate?

The Senate, where muscular foreign policy views still tend to hold sway, is believed to be an easier lift for Obama. Senior senators such as Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) and Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) were among the few who issued forceful statements Saturday supporting the president’s plan for limited military strikes.

However, a potential blow came from the Senate’s most prominent hawks, John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), who said that the president had not gone far enough. McCain and Graham issued a joint statement hinting that they would oppose the resolution because the limited strikes Obama was seeking to have authorized would not “change the momentum on the battlefield” and would leave Assad in place — instead of the regime change Obama had previously stated was his goal.

“Anything short of this would be an inadequate response to the crimes against humanity that Assad and his forces are committing,” McCain and Graham said.

Without their support, it is unclear how many Republican votes there will be for the use-of-force resolution, particularly with the small but

vocal wing of libertarian Republicans appearing poised to firmly oppose the vote.

“I am encouraged President Obama now says he will fulfill his constitutional obligation to seek authorization for any potential military action in Syria,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who is considering seeking the GOP presidential nomination in 2016, said in a statement. “This is the most important decision any President or any Senator must make, and it deserves vigorous debate.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who is closely relying on Paul’s support for his 2014 reelection bid, has remained silent for the past week on his position on Syria.

Speaking to reporters after his speech at the Americans for Prosperity Foundation summit in Orlando, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) said he still needs to be convinced that it is in the country’s interests to take action. “It is incumbent on the president to make the case that military action is in furtherance of the vital national security interests of the United States,” said Cruz, also a possible 2016 contender. “I am troubled by the justifications that the Obama administration has put forth so far. Much of their discussion has concerned what they described as international norms.”

Matea Gold contributed to this report.

Obama to take his Syrian case to Congress

By Editorial Board, Sunday, September 1, 12:39 AMPRESIDENT OBAMA said Saturday that the United States must respond militarily to Syria’s Aug. 21 gassing of its own people. We agree. He also said he would seek congressional authorization before proceeding. We think that’s right, too, though the approach isn’t risk-free.

The case for U.S. action is strong, as we have argued previously. For nearly a century most of the world has united behind the idea that the use of chemical weapons, so horrifying in World War I, is beyond the pale. Waging war against his own people, Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad has used them previously during the past year, but never on the scale of the Aug. 21 attack, in which thousands of people were affected and at least 1,400 killed, according to U.S. officials. Rockets loaded with a nerve agent were shot into residential neighborhoods of the Damascus suburbs, constituting one of the deadliest uses of chemical agents since they were outlawed nine decades ago.

If there is no response, the Assad regime will use them again, on an even larger scale, and other dictators in future conflicts will calculate that they, too, can use these ghastly weapons at no cost. And there will be no response if the United States does not take the lead.

We also argued previously that Mr. Obama should seek the maximum congressional buy-in consistent with operational imperatives. The president said Saturday that there is no military reason for haste, but there are nonetheless risks in delay. The Russians will do their best to throw up diplomatic obstacles while they continue funneling arms to Damascus. The U.S. position could be undermined if few other nations offer support.

And Congress, like Britain’s parliament last week, could say no. A current of isolationism is running strong in both parties, and many Republicans welcome any opportunity to bloody the president’s nose. We have enough faith in the institution and its leaders to believe that they won’t treat this vote as such an opportunity. They should convene without delay. They should demand that Mr. Obama lay out his case and his evidence; they should debate the merits with the seriousness that any act of war demands; and then they should provide strong bipartisan support for the kind of U.S. leadership upon which the world depends — and without which the world would descend into a lawlessness that is terrible to contemplate.

Inevitably the debate will extend to Mr. Obama’s larger Syria strategy, or rather the lack of one. For more than two years he has insisted that Mr. Assad must go, but has taken few steps to hasten that departure. During this time millions of people have been displaced from their homes, al-Qaeda has found a safe haven in the country and violence has spread to neighboring Lebanon and Iraq, with Israel, Jordan and Turkey also at risk. The United States has a strong interest in Mr. Assad’s defeat and the victory of a coalition committed to democracy and pluralism, and there are steps short of committing troops that could make such an outcome more likely. Any response to the Aug. 21 atrocity should be framed with that larger goal in mind.

CONFLICT IN SYRIAWHITE HOUSE MEMO

President Pulls Lawmakers Into Box He Made

WASHINGTON — President Obama’s aides were stunned at what their boss had to say when he summoned them to the Oval Office on Friday at 7 p.m., on the eve of what they believed could be a weekend when American missiles streaked again across the Middle East.

In a two-hour meeting of passionate, sharp debate in the

Oval Office, he told them that after a frantic week in which he seemed to be rushing toward a military attack on Syria, he wanted to pull back and seek Congressional approval first.

He had several reasons, he told them, including a sense of isolation after the terrible setback in the British Parliament. But the most compelling one may have been that acting alone would undercut him if in the next three years he needed Congressional authority for his next military confrontation in the Middle East, perhaps with Iran.

If he made the decision to strike Syria without Congress now, he said, would he get Congress when he really needed it?

“He can’t make these decisions divorced from the American public and from Congress,” said a senior aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the deliberations. “Who knows what we’re going to face in the next three and a half years in the Middle East?”

The Oval Office meeting ended one of the strangest weeks of the Obama administration, in which a president who had drawn a “red line” against the use of chemical weapons, and watched Syrian military forces breach it with horrific consequences, found himself compelled to act by his own statements. But Mr. Obama, who has been reluctant for the past two years to get entangled in Syria, had qualms from the start.

Even as he steeled himself for an attack this past week, two advisers said, he nurtured doubts about the political and legal justification for action, given that the United Nations Security Council had refused to bless a military strike that he had not put before Congress. A drumbeat of lawmakers demanding a vote added to the sense that he could be out on a limb.

“I know well we are weary of war,” Mr. Obama said in the Rose Garden on Saturday. “We’ve ended one war in Iraq. We’re ending another in Afghanistan. And the American people have the good sense to know we cannot resolve the underlying conflict in Syria with our military.”

The speech, which crystallized both Mr. Obama’s outrage at the wanton use of chemical weapons and his ambivalence about military action, was a coda to a week that began the previous Saturday, when he convened a meeting of his National Security Council.

In that meeting, held in the White House Situation Room, Mr. Obama said he was devastated by the images of women and children gasping and convulsing from the effects of a poison gas attack in the suburbs of Damascus three days before. The Aug. 21 attack, which American intelligence agencies say killed more than 1,400 people, was on a far different scale than earlier, smaller chemical weapons attacks in Syria, which were marked by murky, conflicting evidence.

“I haven’t made a decision yet on military action,” he told his war council that Saturday, according to an aide. “But when I was talking about chemical weapons, this is what I was talking about.” From that moment, the White House set about formulating the strongest case for military action it could.

Last Sunday, it issued a statement dismissing the need to wait for United Nations investigators because their evidence, the statement said, had been corrupted by the relentless shelling of the sites. By Monday, Secretary of State John Kerry, who had long advocated a more aggressive policy on Syria, delivered a thunderous speech that said President Bashar al-Assad was guilty of a “moral obscenity.”

By midweek, administration officials were telling reporters

that the administration would not be deterred by the lack of an imprimatur from the Security Council, where Syria’s biggest backer, Russia, holds a veto.

Yet the president’s ambivalence was palpable, and public. While Mr. Kerry made his fiery case against Mr. Assad, Mr. Obama was circumspect, sprinkling his words with caveats about the modest scale of the operation and acknowledgments of the nation’s combat fatigue.

“We don’t have good options, great options, for the region,” the president said in an interview Wednesday on PBS’s “News Hour,” before describing a “limited, tailored” operation that he said would amount to a “shot across the bow” for Mr. Assad.

White House aides were in the meantime nervously watching a drama across the Atlantic. They knew that Prime Minister David Cameron’s attempt to win the British Parliament’s authorization for action was in deep trouble, but the defeat on a preliminary motion by just 13 votes on Thursday was a jolt. Although aides said before the vote that Mr. Obama was prepared to launch a strike without waiting for a second British vote, scheduled for Tuesday, the lack of a British blessing removed another layer of legitimacy.

Mr. Obama was annoyed by what he saw as Mr. Cameron’s stumbles, reflecting a White House view that Mr. Cameron had mishandled the situation. Beyond that, Mr. Obama said little about his thinking at the time.

It was only on Friday that he told the aides, they said, about how his doubts had grown after the vote: a verdict, Mr. Obama told his staff, that convinced him it was all the more important to get Congressional ratification. After all, he told them, “we similarly have a war-weary public.”

And if the British government was unable to persuade

lawmakers of the legitimacy of its plan, shouldn’t he submit it to the same litmus test in Congress, even if he had not done so in the case of Libya?

Mr. Obama’s backing of a NATO air campaign against Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi in 2011 had left a sour taste among many in Congress, particularly rank-and-file members. More than 140 lawmakers, Republicans and Democrats, had signed a letter demanding a vote on Syria.

Moving swiftly in Libya, aides said, was necessary to avert a slaughter of rebels in the eastern city of Benghazi. But that urgency did not exist in this case.

Indeed, Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Mr. Obama that the limited strike he had in mind would be just as effective “in three weeks as in three days,” one official said.

Beyond the questions of political legitimacy, aides said, Mr. Obama told them on Friday that he was troubled that authorizing another military action over the heads of Congress would contradict the spirit of his speech last spring in which he attempted to chart a shift in the United States from the perennial war footing of the post-Sept. 11 era.

All of these issues were on Mr. Obama’s mind when he invited his chief of staff, Denis R. McDonough, for an early evening stroll on the south lawn of the White House. In the West Wing, an aide said, staff members hoped to get home early, recognizing they would spend the weekend in the office.

Forty-five minutes later, shortly before 7, Mr. Obama summoned his senior staff members to tell them that he had decided to take military action, but with a caveat.

“I have a pretty big idea I want to test with you guys,” he

said to the group, which included Mr. McDonough and his deputy, Rob Nabors; the national security adviser, Susan E. Rice, and her deputies, Antony J. Blinken and Benjamin J. Rhodes; the president’s senior adviser, Dan Pfeiffer; and several legal experts to discuss the War Powers Resolution.

The resistance from the group was immediate. The political team worried that Mr. Obama could lose the vote, as Mr. Cameron did, and that it could complicate the White House’s other legislative priorities. The national security team argued that international support for an operation was unlikely to improve.

At 9 p.m., the president drew the debate to a close and telephoned Mr. Kerry and Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel to tell them of his plans.

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Jackie Calmes contributed reporting.

CONFLICT IN SYRIA

Kerry Seeks to Reassure Syrian Opposition LeaderBy MICHAEL R. GORDON and THOM SHANKERPublished: August 31, 2013

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WASHINGTON — Secretary of State John Kerry sought to assure the leader of the Syrian opposition on Saturday that President Obama was still determined to hold the Syrian government accountable for a chemical weapons attack near Damascus.

Mr. Kerry’s call to Ahmed al-Jarba, the president of the Syrian opposition, followed Mr. Obama’s decision to postpone an American-led military strike in order to seek Congressional approval.

Mr. Kerry delivered a similar message to Prince Saud al-Faisal, the foreign minister of Saudi Arabia, which has been one of the main backers of the Syrian opposition, State Department officials said.

But Mr. Obama’s change in direction left some opposition officials disillusioned. Some rebel officials said that the president’s continued insistence that any strike would be limited in duration and scope had prompted worries that if an attack eventually came, it would not deliver a powerful

enough blow to the Syrian government’s forces.

“There are many announcements that they won’t make it long,” said Maj. Isam Rayes, an official who works for the Supreme Military Council, the armed wing of the opposition.

“I think that it will not be strong enough,” he added in an interview via Skype from a location in Syria.

The Obama administration’s planning for a possible attack has been so well telegraphed that the United States has forfeited the element of surprise.

Much of the Syrian military has already left its bases, scattered and dug into fortified locations. Opposition officials also assert that the Syrian military has been moving documents and equipment into civilian neighborhoods in Damascus that it knows the United States would not strike and has even moved some troops into schools.

In his statement on Saturday, Mr. Obama said he had been assured by Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that the effectiveness of any attack would not be diminished by the delay to await Congressional action.

Some Pentagon officials put a positive face on the delay, and said that as long as the Syrian government’s forces were dispersed they would be less effective. “That dispersal may pose challenges to us as we track and target them, but it also makes his command-and-control more complicated, and certainly a little slower,” a senior Pentagon official said.

But that official also warned that the delay would give Syrian allies and their militant proxies more time to plan possible retaliatory strikes in response to an American attack.

Jeffrey White, a former analyst with the Defense Intelligence

Agency who is now a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said that it would not take President Bashar al-Assad’s government long to mobilize units if it came to the conclusion that an American strike was not imminent and went on the offensive.

“The regime has got to be thinking that they dodged a bullet here and that maybe there are not going to be any bullets,” Mr. White said.

Col. Edward W. Thomas Jr., a spokesman for General Dempsey, said that in the coming days the military would “continue to refine our targeting based on the most recent intelligence” and would be ready with new targeting options when Mr. Obama wants to review them.

At the State Department, Mr. Kerry has been heavily involved in trying to win Congressional support.

The British decision not to participate in an American-led operation stunned many administration officials and has added to the doubts of lawmakers.

Mr. Kerry is also calculating that a strong statement by the Arab League in support of action might influence the American debate. The Arab League blamed the Syrian government for the chemical attack in a statement on Tuesday, but did not endorse a punitive American military strike that would be carried out without the backing of the United Nations.

But the league’s foreign ministers are scheduled to meet again on Sunday and issue another statement.

As the president of the Syrian opposition, Mr. Jarba is scheduled to speak to the group.

A senior administration official said that Mr. Kerry called Mr.

Jarba on Saturday to confer with him about his presentation to the league and emphasized that Mr. Obama had decided to take military action. Mr. Kerry also made the case that waiting to secure Congressional action would be in the Syrian opposition’s interest, as the Obama administration would then be able to operate with more American support.

Mr. Kerry stressed to his Saudi counterpart that the Arab League meeting was important because it could help the administration build its case with Congress for action. A former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Mr. Kerry also spent two hours on Saturday in conference calls with lawmakers.

SAT AUG 31, 2013 AT 04:32 PM PDT

White House release: Draft legislation for

Authorization for Use of US Armed Forces

Authorization for the Use of United States Armed ForcesWhereas, on August 21, 2013, the Syrian government carried out a chemical Weapons attack in the suburbs of Damascus, Syria, killing more than 1,000 innocent Syrians;

Whereas these flagrant actions were in violation of international norms and the laws of War;

Whereas the United States and 188 other countries comprising 98 percent of the World’s population are parties to the Chemical Weapons

Convention, which prohibits the development, production, acquisition, stockpiling or use of chemical weapons;

Whereas, in the Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act of 2003,Congress found that Syria’s acquisition of weapons of mass destruction threatens the security of the Middle East and the national security interests of the United States;

Whereas the United Nations Security Council, in Resolution 1540 (2004), affirmed that the proliferation of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons constitutes a threat to international peace and Security;

Whereas, the objective of the United States’ use of military force in connection with this authorization Should be to deter, disrupt, prevent, and degrade the potential for, future uses of chemical Weapons or other Weapons of mass destruction;

Whereas, the conflict in Syria will only be resolved through a negotiated political settlement, and Congress calls on all parties to the conflict in Syria to participate urgently and constructively in the Geneva process; and

Whereas, unified action by the legislative and executive branches will send a clear signal of American resolve.

SEC. _ AUTHORIZATION FOR USE OF UNITED STATES ARMED FORCES

(a) Authorization.- The President is authorized to use the Armed Forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate in connection with the use of Chemical Weapons or other weapons of mass destruction in the conflict in Syria in order to:

(l) prevent or deter the use or proliferation (including the transfer to terrorist groups or other state or non-state actors), within, to or from Syria, of any Weapons of mass destruction, including chemical or biological weapons or components of or materials used in such Weapons; or

(2) protect the United States and its allies and partners against the threat posed by such Weapons.

(b) War Powers Resolution Requirements.

(1) Specific Statutory Authorization Consistent with section 8(a)(1) of the War Powers Resolution, the Congress declares that this section is intended to constitute specific statutory authorization within the meaning of section 5(b) of the War Powers Resolution.

(2) Applicability of requirements.—Nothing in this joint resolution supersedes any requirement of the War Powers Resolution.

Questions and AirstrikesWhy Congress needs to think hard about Obama’s Syria plan.BY DANIEL BYMAN | AUGUST 31, 2013President Barack Obama's surprising announcement that he will put off action on Syria until Congress weighs in offers a chance to consider, or reconsider, fundamental questions regarding a U.S. military strike on Syria. Congress should recognize that the president's decision to consult has costs and that a limited military strike is likely to accomplish little and could even make a bad situation worse.

Congress's first question should be about the president's claim that, "our capacity to execute

this mission is not time-sensitive; it will be effective tomorrow, or next week, or one month from now." Yes, of course, the Syrian civil war still will be raging weeks from now, and the U.S. military will remain prepared to strike. But during those weeks the carnage will continue, with jihadists growing stronger among the opposition. The diplomatic moment created by Bashar al-Assad's massive use of chemical weapons on August 21 will fade as other concerns become prominent on the international agenda.

Legislators must be pleased to have a say, but they should also ask whether the delay in striking and the last-minute decision to put the use of force before Congress affects U.S. credibility on other issues. Will Israel believe America has its back if the president must wait for Congress to approve military action? Does any coercive threat regarding the use of force against Iran's nuclear program now come with the caveat that the United States would only strike after a congressional vote? Iran's mullahs will no doubt enjoy this fillip to democracy. In the end, the greater democratic legitimacy that comes from congressional support may make this worthwhile, but the decision is not cost free.

Beyond questions concerning Congress's role, the scale of the use of force should be a top concern. Politically, a limited bombing campaign that is of

short duration and hits few targets is easy: after a few days of media buzz, the American people, and the world, will soon go back to ignoring a conflict they'd rather forget. Militarily, however, a short campaign will barely make a dent in the Syrian regime's hold on power or ability to use chemical weapons in the future. The regime has waged a life-and-death civil war for more than two years: 50 or so Tomahawks lobbed from the warships in the Mediterranean, though able to hit targets the rebels cannot, will not fundamentally alter the military balance.

Hitting chemical weapons storage areas has dangers, as some of the chemicals may be released in the process. So instead the United States may leave many stockpiles alone and go after regime bulwarks like elite forces and command-and-control sites, as well as air defense nodes. Destruction of these targets would be a real blow to Assad, though the administration would justify them as going after the broader infrastructure responsible for chemical use. But Assad is likely to see it as part of a broader strategy of regime change. So although the administration is trying to make this about chemical weapons, the Syrian regime will interpret it as a much broader strike.

Because Assad clearly sees this as a life-and-death battle, Congress should ask the administration

what they intend to do if the Syrian regime remains defiant. Obama has tried to assure a war-weary American public that the strikes are a one-off. But if the purposes are deterrence and to enforce a norm against chemical weapons use, defiance leaves America only worse off. My sense is that Assad will be likely to avoid using chemical weapons again because he fears escalation -- but like most analysts I also thought he'd avoid a massive, obvious use in the first place. Assad may also play it safe in terms of fomenting terrorism outside of Syria against the United States or its allies, but again his chemical weapons use and fear for his regime's survival suggests that he may take foolish risks. Simply put, we should admit we don't fully understand how Assad makes decisions. So Congress needs to ask the administration what it has in store if the worst case materializes.

Assad's friends, particularly Iran but also Russia, should also be part of the discussion. Both may increase support for the Syrian regime in the face of an American attack. So while Assad's forces may take a pounding, he may gain new arms, new fighters, and more financial support. Iranian officials have even talked loudly if vaguely that someone, somewhere, might retaliate in response to a U.S. strike.

The question of credibility should also be prominent in the debate. President Obama and

Secretary of State John Kerry raised expectations that America would strike Syria. Is there a price to backing down? It is easy to doomsay and claim that every American enemy will become emboldened. But hyperbole aside, escalating the rhetoric and backing down in the face of, well, nothing suggests to U.S. foes that Washington has little stomach for future fights.

Finally, though I am skeptical U.S. strikes will change the military balance, Congress should also explore whether we are prepared for "success." Jihadists are running amok in Syria, and the U.S.-backed moderate opposition is weak. American programs to strengthen the jihadists militarily, which received only lukewarm administration support and (ahem, ahem) stalled in Congress until July, are barely off the ground. Should Assad fall, Syria would probably collapse into chaos and radicals would control much of the country.

The debate in the weeks to come should be broad. Legislators and the administration should discuss the strategic and military implications of a congressional role and think about the long-term effects of any U.S. military action. In the end, a healthy debate might find that a middle ground -- a strike that hits only a few targets and is of limited duration -- may be the worst of all options. To make a difference in the long-term, the United

States needs to do more, particularly with the opposition. And if it won't do more, then staying out altogether may be the best option.

On Syria, Obama Administration Disproves Obama DoctrinePosted By Kori Schake Saturday, August 31, 2013 - 6:33 PM SharePresident Barack Obama has turned to Congress for support and legitimization of the military attack his administration is contemplating against the Syrian government. The White House was smart to reverse itself, seeing that nearly 80 percent of Americans believe he should seek congressional support and nearly that proportion is skeptical of intervention in Syria. It's judicious politics for him to win the argument and share responsibility for military action in defense of an "international norm" that does not directly affect our war-weary country.

The president asserted he did not require congressional authorization for action in Libya because he had a U.N. Security Council mandate. Syria is shaping up to be the mirror image: The president is seeking domestic support because he cannot attain international backing.

It's never a good thing when our government's policy is indistinguishable from Onion parodies of its policy. The unforced errors -- setting red lines and then allowing them to be crossed, Gen. Martin Dempsey defending the president's inaction in Syria just before the president decides action is necessary, undercutting the U.N. by announcing our intelligence findings in advance of theirs, torrents of leaks, the president's public vacillation -- are alone enough to make one marvel at the breadth of our power that the United States can remain so influential while being so ineffectual.These latest turns of the Obama administration's Syria policy do more than confirm the administration's strategic illiteracy; they refute the president's broader claims about the international order and how America should engage that order.The president's National Security Strategy outlines Obama's vision of a world in which countries refrain from the use of military force without approval of the United Nations Security Council. Whether they believed their policies would be so attractive that countries would not object or they

believed U.S. power should be restrained when it could not gain approval, the president is now in the position of wanting to use military force to uphold an international norm and being refused an international mandate from the United Nations, from the relevant regional organization, the Arab League, and even from that most reliable ally, Britain.Another central element of the administration's doctrine is that cooperation with adversaries can foster better foreign-policy outcomes. This idea formed the basis for the Russia reset and included rejecting regime change as a U.S. objective in Iran and elsewhere, hesitance about democracy promotion efforts, and a tendency to whitewash depredations -- think Secretary Hillary Clinton equivocating about China's human rights record or declaring Bashar al-Assad a reformer while he was already killing Syrians. Now the administration finds its policy preferences shackled by the very adversaries it has been courting: Russia, China, Iran. The White House seems surprised to find hostility enduring, didn't bother to understand the deep roots of opposition and conflicting interests, and didn't build the bases for preserving our autonomy and limiting their latitude. And then there's leading from behind. The administration celebrated putting others at the forefront, our role on the margins of effort (even as the White House took credit for what others achieved). But that requires others willing and able to do so. It's worth noting that only NATO among international organizations has supported action against Syria; Europeans continue to be the allies most likely to run risks to uphold norms and law. They were perhaps winnable constituencies, if the president had expended the effort to win them. Obama having such faith in his ability to persuade is disinclined to engage in the retail work of building support. With Britain out and many allies unwilling to act for the very reasons the Obama administration has trumpeted to justify its own inaction, NATO's support will have little practical effect. Having taken for granted the support of staunch allies, the administration cannot even count on them."Smart power" in which the administration put such store has been buried in the grave of urgency. When pressed to "do something," the something the White House evidently selected is plinking military targets specially selected not to have strategic resonance. Far from identifying a political end state and then having the interagency fill in the diplomatic, economic, intelligence, and military means to achieve it, the Obama administration is using military force as an end in itself.The president is thus left in the circumstance of arguing for the very approach he condemned in his predecessor: identifying a systemic threat to the international order that the international institutions will not address,

adversaries aligned to preclude the trappings of legitimization, asserting that the will of the American people itself constitutes adequate allies, regional organizations divided, and scrambling to drum up a "coalition of the willing" in which the overwhelming burden will fall to the United States to use military force whose effects could very well either be wholly ineffective or worsen the threats to our country.There's a wonderful passage in Shakespeare's Henry IV in which Glendower claims to have the power to "call spirits from the vasty deep." Hotspur deflates him by answering, "Will they come when you do call?" The Obama administration believed in "the international community." The mess Obama finds himself in on Syria suggests the international community doesn't believe in him.

Obama's Syria Dilemma

Costantino Pischedda, Erica D. Borghard | August 30, 2013

The debate on the effectiveness of what appears to be an imminent strike on Syria by a U.S.-led coalition has centered on two opposite policy positions. Some observers have argued that a limited missile strike against the Assad regime’s command and control assets would be insufficient to change Assad’s calculus and deter future uses of chemical weapons; therefore, a more robust intervention would be necessary to achieve these strategic objectives and preserve American credibility. Others, however, have voiced concern that even a limited missile strike would represent a first step down an inevitable slippery slope, leading to a more costly and prolonged intervention in Syria.

These contrasting positions get at the root of President Obama’s dilemma. On the one hand, Obama needs to send a strong signal to the Assad regime to change its behavior. On the other hand, the President must reassure the American people and international audiences that the use of force would be limited in scale and scope.

However, what this debate fails to appreciate are the deep interconnections between the different kinds of risks associated with the prospective intervention. Coercion theory sheds important light on this. Coercion is the actual or threatened use of force aimed at changing an adversary’s behavior. Successful

coercion has two basic requirements. First, the target of coercion must believe that the prospective pain inflicted on it will outweigh the benefits of continued defiance. In other words, the target must know that it would be made to pay an unacceptable price for failing to comply. Second, and often ignored, the target must be reassured that compliance will end or prevent the punishment. If the adversary believes that punishment is inevitable regardless of its behavior, then there is no incentive to comply.

Also important in this context is the American political audience. President Obama’s goal is not only to send a message to Assad, but also to assuage the concerns of a war-weary American public that the intervention would not lead to further U.S. entanglements in the Middle East. Domestic political considerations are relevant to coercion because they affect the adversary’s perception of the probability that a given threat will be carried out. Obama’s statements about the limited nature of the intervention may lead Assad to doubt the willingness of the United States to inflict sufficient damage, thus convincing him to stand firm.

The problem is that all of these concerns produce conflicting imperatives. Obama, to put it figuratively, faces the classic problem of a short blanket. Pulling the blanket in either direction threatens to expose one of his weaknesses. A strong emphasis on pain to come for the Assad regime may overshadow the message that punishment is conditional on behavior, thus reducing the probability of Syrian compliance and alarming the U.S. domestic public. One does not need to plumb the depths of history to identify relevant examples. Qaddafi failed to give in to Western

demands in the lead-up to the 2011 NATO intervention in part because the Obama administration’s talk about regime change likely convinced him that he would be deposed regardless of his behavior toward Libya’s civilian population.

Conversely, Obama’s efforts to reassure multiple audiences about the limited nature of intervention may make Assad confident that he can ride out the missile strikes, leading to coercion failure. Arguably, an important reason for Milosevic’s decision not to comply with NATO’s initial demands in 1999 was his belief, based on NATO statements, that the intervention would be limited in duration and intensity. As a result, NATO was forced to escalate its bombing campaign up to the point where the deployment of ground troops in Kosovo became a concrete possibility.

These tensions are inherent in any attempt at coercion and are hardly escapable. Nonetheless, policymakers need to fully understand the competing requirements of coercion to avoid blunders in one direction or another. Only this way can policymakers hope to strike the right balance, which is necessary to make the use of force a morally acceptable means to legitimate political ends.

Costantino Pischedda is a Ph.D. candidate in political science at Columbia University. His dissertation focuses on civil war alliances.Erica D. Borghard is a Ph.D. candidate in political science at Columbia University. Her dissertation concerns proxy warfare and the conditions under which allies are drawn into foreign policy misadventures.

The GambleFive big consequences of the president's call to let Congress decide about America's Syrian intervention.BY DAVID ROTHKOPF | AUGUST 31, 2013For a man who is often so Hamlet-like he seems he should be attending meetings in a black velvet doublet and whose Syria policy in particular seems to have been defined primarily by actions not taken and decisions not made, Barack Obama made one of the most profound and momentous decisions of his presidency on Saturday.

By announcing that he would require congressional approval before taking action against Syria's regime for gassing its own people, he took a step that seemed certain to have multiple, potentially profound ramifications. Here are just five:

1. A Syria attack isn't a sure bet.

Military action against Syria that seemed a "certainty" on Friday is no longer assured. And if air strikes do take place, their delay -- despite Obama's protestations to the contrary -- make them likely to be less effective. While the president, and particularly Secretary of State John

Kerry in his effective remarks on Friday, have made a compelling case for American action in Syria, one can never underestimate this Congress's ability to find reasons for inaction, partisanship, or unproductive caviling. The far right and left of the respective parties are disinclined toward intervention. The more hawkish are disinclined toward actions that are too limited. And many Republicans are disinclined to do anything that might help Obama. What is more, developments in the interim -- like hesitation by other allies -- could make the United States appear more isolated or the likely impact of attacks seem less desirable. All these things could contribute to a "no" vote that would make it very difficult for the president to reverse course and take action anyway.

If the administration persuades Congress to support military action, it will be seen as a victory for the president, to be sure. But it may also have given the Assad regime another two or three weeks to redeploy assets and hunker down -- so that the kind of limited attack currently envisioned has even more limited consequences.

2. Red lines ain't what they used to be.

The president has hemmed and hawed regarding his supposed "red line" on chemical weapons use yet again, further undercutting his credibility.

When Obama first suggested a red line, he cited movement or use of chemical weapons as being intolerable. But movement and use have, according to credible reports, occurred on multiple occasions since then -- and the United States took no action. This latest incident on August 21 was so egregious it was impossible to continue looking the other way. (And it was followed, apparently, by another on August 26.) Taking action seemed the only way to restore a sense that the president was a man who meant what he said. But then, late this week, as Britain balked at supporting Washington and domestic public opinion was seen to oppose any U.S. involvement in Syria, a spirit of hesitation seemed to grab the administration, culminating in Saturday's bombshell. Even if the attacks do take place, a new caveat will have been added to any future warning the president may choose to make: We will act -- if the most feckless Congress in memory chooses to go along with him.

3. He's now boxed in for the rest of his term.

Whatever happens with regard to Syria, the larger consequence of the president's action will resonate for years. The president has made it highly unlikely that at any time during the remainder of his term he will be able to initiate military action without seeking congressional approval. It is understandable that many who have opposed actions (see: Libya) taken by the president without

congressional approval under the War Powers Act would welcome Obama's newly consultative approach. It certainly appears to be more in keeping with the kind of executive-legislative collaboration envisioned in the Constitution. While America hasn't actually required a congressional declaration of war to use military force since the World War II era, the bad decisions of past presidents make Obama's move appealing to the war-weary and the war-wary.

But whether you agree with the move or not, it must be acknowledged that now that Obama has set this kind of precedent -- and for a military action that is exceptionally limited by any standard (a couple of days, no boots on the ground, perhaps 100 cruise missiles fired against a limited number of military targets) -- it will be very hard for him to do anything comparable or greater without again returning to the Congress for support. And that's true whether or not the upcoming vote goes his way.

4. This president just dialed back the power of his own office.

Obama has reversed decades of precedent regarding the nature of presidential war powers -- and whether you prefer this change in the balance of power or not, as a matter of quantifiable fact he is transferring greater responsibility for U.S.

foreign policy to a Congress that is more divided, more incapable of reasoned debate or action, and more dysfunctional than any in modern American history. Just wait for the Rand Paul filibuster or similar congressional gamesmanship.

The president's own action in Libya was undertaken without such approval. So, too, was his expansion of America's drone and cyber programs. Will future offensive actions require Congress to weigh in? How will Congress react if the president tries to pick and choose when this precedent should be applied? At best, the door is open to further acrimony. At worst, the paralysis of the U.S. Congress that has given us the current budget crisis and almost no meaningful recent legislation will soon be coming to a foreign policy decision near you. Consider that John Boehner was instantly more clear about setting the timing for any potential action against Syria with his statement that Congress will not reconvene before its scheduled September 9 return to Washington than anyone in the administration has been thus far.

Perhaps more importantly, what will future Congresses expect of future presidents?  If Obama abides by this new approach for the next three years, will his successors lack the ability to act quickly and on their own? While past presidents have no doubt abused their War Powers authority

to take action and ask for congressional approval within 60 days, we live in a volatile world; sometimes security requires swift action. The president still legally has that right, but Obama's decision may have done more -- for better or worse -- to dial back the imperial presidency than anything his predecessors or Congress have done for decades.

5. America's international standing will likely suffer.

As a consequence of all of the above, even if the president "wins" and persuades Congress to support his extremely limited action in Syria, the perception of America as a nimble, forceful actor on the world stage and that its president is a man whose word carries great weight is likely to be diminished. Again, like the shift or hate it, foreign leaders can do the math. Not only is post-Iraq, post-Afghanistan America less inclined to get involved anywhere, but when it comes to the use of U.S. military force (our one indisputable source of superpower strength) we just became a whole lot less likely to act or, in any event, act quickly. Again, good or bad, that is a stance that is likely to figure into the calculus of those who once feared provoking the United States.

A final consequence of this is that it seems ever more certain that Obama's foreign policy will be

framed as so anti-interventionist and focused on disengagement from world affairs that it will have major political consequences in 2016. The dialectic has swung from the interventionism of Bush to the leaning away of Obama. Now, the question will be whether a centrist synthesis will emerge that restores the idea that the United States can have a muscular foreign policy that remains prudent, capable of action, and respects international laws and norms. Almost certainly, that is what President Obama would argue he seeks. But I suspect that others, including possibly his former secretary of state may well seek to define a different approach. Indeed, we may well see the divisions within the Democratic Party on national security emerge as key fault lines in the Clinton vs. Biden primary battles of 2016. And just imagine Clinton vs. Rand Paul in the general election.

Obama's last-minute decision to seek congressional approval for Syria strike

By Jim Acosta, CNN Senior White House Correspondent

Washington (CNN) -- After signaling he was on the verge of delivering a strike against Syria, President Barack Obama made a last-minute decision Friday evening to seek congressional authorization before any military action, senior administration officials told reporters Saturday.The president announced the change in plans to his advisers at approximately 7 p.m. Friday, officials said. Obama had also come to the conclusion the United States should carry out a limited military strike to degrade Syria's chemical weapons capabilities, they added.After privately wrestling with the decision for the past week, the officials said, Obama took what was described as a 45-minute walk with Chief of Staff Denis McDonough around 6 p.m. Friday and then called his top national security advisers into the Oval Office for a discussion.

Key Republican reacts to Obama decision

U.N. begins analysis of Obama decision

Senior administration officials say a heated debate broke out over the president's decision. Those officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity and asked not to be quoted, declined to say which advisers initially disagreed with the call to seek congressional approval. The administration's national security team, those officials added, is now firmly behind the president.The president later telephoned Vice President Joe Biden, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Secretary of State John Kerry to relay his decision, officials said.Obama convened a "principals meeting" of his top national security and intelligence officials Saturday morning to finalize his decision.In addition to consulting with his top advisers, Obama also consulted with

Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who told the president a delay would not jeopardize a military strike against Syria, officials said.A senior administration official told CNN that Secretary of State Kerry has "no concerns" about the president's decision."He was in the Senate for 29 years and has made consultation with Congress a huge priority since he became secretary of state. He has been on the front lines of briefing and consulting with Congress on every foreign policy issue from one end or the other for years."A senior U.S. official indicated Hagel was with the president on the move."As a former senator whose views on the limits of war are well known, it's not hard for Chuck Hagel to agree with the president, " the official told CNN."Hagel, a combat veteran with two Purple Hearts, has a pragmatic approach to the use of military force that involves the need to consider American public opinion. At the same time. Hagel believes that the use of force would be completely justified in the face of the reckless slaughter of innocent Syrian civilians," the official said.But the decision to wait and seek congressional authorization comes with some risk, officials conceded. A vote to approve a military mission in Syria could fail in Congress.There is also the uncertain reaction from Syria's President Bashar al-Assad.Senior administration officials, who accuse al-Assad of gassing rebel fighters along with innocent civilians, said the Syrian leader should think twice before taking any drastic action. The president, those officials cautioned, would hold al-Assad accountable.Senior administration officials rejected the notion the president's decision to seek congressional authorization undermines decades of entrenched executive branch powers to take military action.Asking lawmakers for approval, the White House argues, would strengthen the president's position diplomatically. Officials insisted the legislative branch is also responsible for holding al-Assad accountable for his alleged use of poison gas, noting Congress ratified an international chemical weapons convention in 1997.To bolster their case to members of Congress, White House officials plan to make available classified materials from the administration's intelligence report on the August 21 attack around Damascus. National security officials released an unclassified version of that assessment Friday.Congressional leaders, senior administration officials maintained, were supportive of the president's decision to ask for approval from Capitol Hill.A top legislative aide, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity,

questioned the confidence of White House officials in the outcome of any vote."It's going to take a lot of work from (the president) to sell it. It's all on him," the aide said.

U.S. military officers have deep

doubts about impact, wisdom of a U.S. strike on Syria

By Ernesto Londoño, Published: August 30

The Obama administration’s plan to launch a military strike against Syria is being received with serious reservations by many in the U.S. military, which is coping with the scars of two lengthy wars and a rapidly contracting budget, according to current and former officers.

Having assumed for months that the United States was unlikely to intervene militarily in Syria, the Defense Department has been thrust onto a war footing that has made many in the armed services uneasy, according to interviews with more than a dozen military officers ranging from captains to a four-star general.

Former and current officers, many with the painful lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan on their minds, said the main reservations concern the potential unintended consequences of launching cruise missiles against Syria.

Some questioned the use of military force as a punitive measure and suggested that the White House lacks a coherent strategy. If the administration is ambivalent about the wisdom of defeating or crippling the Syrian leader, possibly setting the stage for Damascus to fall to fundamentalist rebels, they said, the military objective of strikes on Assad’s military targets is at best ambiguous.

“There’s a broad naivete in the political class about America’s obligations in foreign policy issues, and scary simplicity about the effects that employing American military power can achieve,” said retired Lt. Gen. Gregory S. Newbold, who served as director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the run-up to the Iraq war,

noting that many of his contemporaries are alarmed by the plan.

New cycle of attacks?

Marine Lt. Col. Gordon Miller, a fellow at the Center for a New American Security, warned this week of “potentially devastating consequences, including a fresh round of chemical weapons attacks and a military response by Israel.”

“If President [Bashar al-Assad] were to absorb the strikes and use chemical weapons again, this would be a significant blow to the United States’ credibility and it would be compelled to escalate the assault on Syria to achieve the original objectives,” Miller wrote in a commentary for the think tank.

A National Security Council spokeswoman said Thursday she would not discuss “internal deliberations.” White House officials reiterated Thursday that the administration is not contemplating a protracted military engagement.

Still, many in the military are skeptical. Getting drawn into the Syrian war, they fear, could distract the Pentagon in the midst of a vexing mission: its exit from Afghanistan, where U.S. troops are still being killed regularly. A young Army officer who is wrapping up a year-long tour there said soldiers were surprised to learn about the looming strike, calling the prospect “very dangerous.”

“I can’t believe the president is even considering it,” said the officer, who like most officers interviewed for this story agreed to speak only on the condition of anonymity because military personnel are reluctant to criticize policymakers while military campaigns are being planned. “We have been fighting the last 10 years a counterinsurgency war. Syria has modern weaponry. We would have to retrain for a conventional war.”

Dempsey’s warning

Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has warned in great detail about the risks and pitfalls of U.S. military intervention in Syria.

“As we weigh our options, we should be able to conclude with some confidence that use of force will move us toward the intended outcome,” Dempsey wrote last month in a letter to the Senate Armed Services Committee. “Once we take action, we should be prepared for what comes next. Deeper involvement is hard to avoid.”

Dempsey has not spoken publicly about the administration’s planned strike on Syria, and it is unclear to what extent his position shifted after last week’s alleged chemical weapons attack. Dempsey said this month in an interview with ABC News that the lessons of Iraq weigh heavily on his calculations regarding Syria.

“It has branded in me the idea that the use of military power must be part of an overall strategic solution that includes international partners and a whole of government,” he said in the Aug. 4 interview. “Simply the application of force rarely produces and, in fact, maybe never produces the outcome we seek.”

The recently retired head of the U.S. Central Command, Gen. James Mattis, said last month at a security conference that the United States has “no moral obligation to do the impossible” in Syria. “If Americans take ownership of this, this is going to be a full-throated, very, very serious war,” said Mattis, who as Centcom chief oversaw planning for a range of U.S. military responses in Syria.

The potential consequences of a U.S. strike include a retaliatory attack by the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah — which supports Assad — on Israel, as well as cyberattacks on U.S. targets and infrastructure, U.S. military officials said.

“What is the political end state we’re trying to achieve?” said a retired senior officer involved in Middle East operational planning who said his

concerns are widely shared by active-duty military leaders. “I don’t know what it is. We say it’s not regime change. If it’s punishment, there are other ways to punish.” The former senior officer said that those who are expressing alarm at the risks inherent in the plan “are not being heard other than in a pro-forma manner.”

President Obama said in a PBS interview on Wednesday that he is not contemplating a lengthy engagement, but instead “limited, tailored approaches.”

A retired Central Command officer said the administration’s plan would “gravely disappoint our allies and accomplish little other than to be seen as doing something.”

“It will be seen as a half measure by our allies in the Middle East,” the officer said. “Iran and Syria will portray it as proof that the U.S. is unwilling to defend its interests in the region.”

Still, some within the military, while apprehensive, support striking Syria. W. Andrew Terrill, a Middle East expert at the U.S. Army War College, said the limited history of the use of chemical weapons in the region suggests that a muted response from the West can be dangerous.

“There is a feeling as you look back that if you don’t stand up to chemical weapons, they’re going to take it as a green light and use them on a recurring basis,” he said.

An Army lieutenant colonel said the White House has only bad options but should resist the urge to abort the plan now.

“When a president draws a red line, for better or worse, it’s policy,” he said, referring to Obama’s declaration last year about Syria’s potential use of chemical weapons. “It cannot appear to be scared or tepid. Remember, with respect to policy choices concerning Syria, we are discussing degrees of bad and worse.”

http://www.nytimes.com/video/2013/08/31/world/middleeast/100000002415936/obama-seeks-support-on-syria.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeYDhMmVLXI

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In Syria delay, Kerry may prove himself a team player

By Karen DeYoung, Monday, September 2, 2:58 AM

Two days after he stood in the ornate Treaty Room at the State Department to deliver a forceful address on the justification for an imminent U.S. military strike against Syria, Secretary of State John F. Kerry returned to the same venue Sunday to defend a different approach.

In his maiden appearance as secretary on the Sunday talk shows, Kerry served as the administration’s spokesman for explaining President Obama’s surprising, last-minute decision to delay any attack until Congress could vote on it.

It was not a conclusion Kerry anticipated, according to senior administration officials. But after seven months in office, during which Kerry has often been portrayed as pushing for a more assertive Middle East policy than Obama would like, the delay may ultimately prove an opportunity to solidify his relationship with the president.

“For Kerry, it’s like, look, the guy’s a team player,” said one official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the secretary’s thinking. “And if you’re talking about consulting a body that he was a part of for almost 30 years, that’s not a hard decision.”

Others in Kerry’s camp said that he had advocated more engagement with the public and Congress during last week’s internal discussions about a possible strike. They said he argued that there was no way of knowing where lawmakers really stood until they were presented with evidence the administration had amassed that the Syrian government had carried out a massive chemical weapons attack.

Kerry’s Friday speech had followed a National Security Council meeting that morning that included a discussion of the outline of his remarks and Obama thanking him “ for his efforts to make the public case,” deputy national security adviser Benjamin J. Rhodes said.

While the intelligence Kerry presented appeared to do little to shake members of Congress from their determination that the administration needed to do more consultation that it had so far, Obama alone decided to split the difference. On Friday night, he told his stunned advisers that while a U.S. attack was justified and he had the authority to launch it, he would give Congress the opportunity to vote.

Kerry had not advocated for a specific date for a strike, according to officials, and did not argue against Obama’s decision.

On Saturday morning, the NSC met again to discuss how to carry out the new plans. Congressional leaders who were notified of Obama’s decision advised against calling lawmakers back from recess before they are scheduled to reconvene Sept. 9, noting the Wednesday start of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year.

After Obama’s public address Saturday afternoon, it fell to Kerry to make five straight Sunday-morning appearances. He repeatedly called Obama’s decision to delay “courageous” and said it was the president’s right to make it.

He refused to address the possibility that Congress, where he served in the Senate for nearly three decades, could not be persuaded.

“I don’t contemplate that,” he said on ABC’s “This Week.” “I think the stakes are just really too high.”

Despite insisting early last week that the evidence proving Syria’s chemical weapons use was “undeniable,” and insisting on Friday that a U.S. response was imperative on moral and national security grounds, Kerry said Sunday that delay would provide a greater opportunity to “build the case” to both Congress and the American public.

Moreover, he said, “it also gives us time to reach out to allies, friends around the world, [and] build support on an international basis.” Ultimately, he said, “the president can proceed and our nation can proceed from a much stronger position.”

As a senator, Kerry supported decisions by two Democratic administrations — in 1999 in the former Yugoslavia under the administration of Bill Clinton, and in 2011 in Libya under Obama — that the president had full domestic authority to order limited military strikes short of all-out war if necessary to protect U.S. national security.

But in Yugoslavia, the United States acted as part of NATO; in Libya, both NATO and the United Nations Security Council approved.

The absence of international allies weighed as much on the White House as domestic disapproval, particularly after Britain’s parliament voted Thursday against participation. French President Francois Hollande said Friday he was “ready” to participate, but also scheduled a debate in the National Assembly for Wednesday, leaving the United States as the non-democratic outlier.

“You could draw two things from the British vote,” the senior administration official said. ”One is, boy, you better not go to parliament because publics are weary of war. Or, you could take the inside out and say it’s precisely because publics are weary of war and the situation in Syria has been so complicated that you need to put the country on a stronger footing and go to Congress.”

As foreign policy experts contemplated the effect of Obama’s decision on U.S. standing and credibility in the world, legal scholars joined a familiar debate over whether it was necessary, or merely advisable, for the executive branch to ask Congress before utilizing the U.S. military.

In Libya, Obama defended his prerogative to deploy American aircraft and missiles without congressional authorization. The administration’s legal analysis found that the absence of U.S. troop involvement, the “limited” nature of the engagement and the urgency of the threat all gave the president the power to act without invoking the War Powers Resolution.

Each of those justifications was invoked last week regarding Syria.

“Very bluntly, the president has the constitutional authority,” a former Obama official said. “He doesn’t have to go to Congress. . . . it is very unusual” to seek approval for what administration officials have said would be a two- or three-day strike on Syrian military targets.

“But it creates a political precedent” that may come back to haunt Obama or his successors, the former official said.

Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haass charged in a Twitter posting after Obama’s Saturday announcement that the president had gone from “leading from behind to not leading.” Obama’s decision to go to Congress, Haass said, “raises doubts about U.S. reliability, determination.”

Kerry forcefully disagreed, telling CNN Sunday that Obama was “leading in the right way. If he didn’t do this, I can hear all of the critics saying ‘Why didn’t the President go to Congress . . . he could have asked, he had time to ask.’”

CONFLICT IN SYRIA

President Seeks to Rally Support for Syria Strike

Mohamed Abdullah/ReutersPublished: September 1, 2013 862 Comments

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration began a full-press campaign on Sunday for Congressional approval of its plan to carry out a punitive strike against the Syrian government.

The lobbying blitz stretched from Capitol Hill, where the administration held its first classified briefing on Syria open to all lawmakers, to Cairo, where Secretary of State John Kerry reached Arab diplomats by phone in an attempt to rally international support for a firm response to the Aug. 21 chemical weapons attack in the suburbs of Damascus.

Mr. Kerry appeared on five morning talk shows, announcing new evidence — that the neurotoxin sarin had been used in the attack that killed more than 1,400 people — and expressing confidence that Congress would ultimately back the president’s plan for military action.

Behind closed doors on Capitol Hill, the administration presented classified intelligence to any senator or House member who wished to attend. About 80 did, but some from both parties emerged from the briefing convinced that the draft language authorizing military action would need to be tightened.

The rush of activity came a day after Mr. Obama’s surprise decision to seek the authorization of Congress for a strike on the Syrian government.

Ahead of an Arab League meeting in Cairo, Mr. Kerry sought to mobilize backing for American-led military action at a meeting the group held on Sunday night.

A statement that was issued by the league asserted that the Syrian government was “fully responsible” for the chemical weapons attack and asked the United Nations and the international community “to take the necessary measures against those who committed this crime.”

To the satisfaction of American officials, the statement did not explicitly mention the United Nations Security Council or assert that military action could be taken only with its approval. But it stopped short of a direct call for Western military action against Syria.

Before the meeting got under way, the Saudi foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, urged the international community to stop the Syrian government’s “aggression” against its people.

Saudi Arabia has been one of the principal supporters of the Syrian opposition, and Mr. Kerry consulted by phone on Sunday with Prince Bandar bin Sultan, Saudi Arabia’s intelligence chief and secretary general of its national security council.

The Obama administration’s calculation has been that a call for tough action by the Arab diplomats would enable the White House to argue to members of Congress that it had regional backing for military action and would make up, at least politically, for the British decision on Thursday not to join the American-led attack.

But Syria’s government on Sunday defiantly mocked Mr. Obama’s decision to turn to Congress, saying it was a sign of weakness. A state-run newspaper, Al Thawra, called the action “the start of the historic American retreat” and said Mr. Obama had put off an attack because of a “sense of implicit defeat and the disappearance of his allies.”

Syria’s deputy foreign minister, Faisal Mekdad, told reporters in Damascus, “It is clear there was a sense of hesitation and disappointment in what was said by President Barack Obama yesterday. And it is also clear there was a sense of confusion, as well.”

In some measure, part of the challenge that the Obama administration faces in trying to rally support at home for a punitive strike in Syria is the result of the deep ambivalence it has expressed about becoming involved in the conflict.

Part of the White House strategy for securing Congressional support now is to emphasize not only what Syria did, but also how a failure to act against Syria might embolden enemies of Israel like Iran and Hezbollah.

Mr. Kerry, in his television appearances, said that if Congress passed a measure authorizing the use of force, it would send a firm message to Iran that the United States would not tolerate the fielding of a nuclear device, and thus safeguard Israel’s security.

“I do not believe the Congress of the United States will turn its back on this moment,” Mr. Kerry said on the NBC News program “Meet The Press.” “The challenge of Iran, the challenges of the region, the challenge of standing up for and standing beside our ally, Israel, helping to shore up Jordan — all of these things are very, very powerful interests and I believe Congress will pass it.”

One administration official, who, like others, declined to be

identified discussing White House strategy, called the American Israel Political Affairs Committee “the 800-pound gorilla in the room,” and said its allies in Congress had to be saying, “If the White House is not capable of enforcing this red line” — against catastrophic use of chemical weapons — “we’re in trouble.”

Israeli officials have been concerned by Mr. Obama’s decision, but have been mostly restrained in their public comments. Mr. Kerry talked on Sunday with Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister.

Both the House and Senate are expected to have votes sometime after they return from recess on Sept. 9, although Senator Harry Reid, the Democratic leader, said the Senate Foreign Relations Committee would convene hearings on the Syrian issue Tuesday afternoon.

While Mr. Kerry said he was confident Congress would vote to approve the use of force, Representative Peter T. King, the New York Republican and a former chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said that if a vote in the House were held today, Mr. Obama would likely lose as a result of the “isolationist wing.”

Much of the debate in Washington concerned the terms of the resolution the White House has proposed for authorizing the use of force.

Representative Chris Van Hollen, a senior Democrat from Maryland, said that while the administration’s resolution limited the purpose of an attack to stopping the use of weapons of mass destruction, the measure left the military too much “running room” and did not set limits on the duration of the military operation.

Congressional advocates of strong action to help the Syrian opposition, in contrast, have complained that the attack that

President Obama appears to be planning seemed to be too limited to have enough of an impact.

Senators John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, both Republicans, have warned that they would not support “isolated military strikes in Syria” that were not part of a broader strategy to shift the momentum on the battlefield. Mr. Obama is scheduled to meet with Mr. McCain on Monday at the White House.

As the White House consults with Congress, Mr. Kerry is planning a new round of diplomacy. He is planning to meet next weekend with European Union diplomats in Vilnius, Lithuania, and with Arab League diplomats in Rome.

After Mr. Obama’s change in direction, the reaction in Britain and France has largely been one of surprise and confusion. The French government, which had said on Friday that it would support a military strike, said it would wait for the American Congress to vote before taking any military action.

President François Hollande still intends to proceed with a military intervention of some kind in Syria, French officials said Sunday, but France will await the decision of Congress before taking action.

“We cannot leave this crime against humanity unpunished,” said Interior Minister Manuel Valls, speaking on French radio. But given logistical questions of “intervention capacity,” Mr. Valls said, France must “await the decision of the United States.”

“France cannot go forward alone,” he said. “There must be a coalition.”

A major question for military experts is what effect the delay in acting might have if force was eventually used by the United States.

Jack Keane, a former vice chief of staff of the Army and a retired four-star general, said in an interview that time would work to the advantage of President Bashar al-Assad as the Syrian forces would have more opportunities to move artillery, missiles and other equipment into civilian areas that they knew would not be struck.

Even Syrian command centers that could not be moved, he said, would be emptied of sensitive equipment and personnel.

But Mr. Obama said that he had been assured by Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, that a delay would not affect the United States military’s ability to carry out a strike.

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Jonathan Weisman contributed reporting from Washington, David D. Kirkpatrick from Cairo, and Steven Erlanger from London.

CONFLICT IN SYRIAWASHINGTON MEMO

History Aside, Obama Bets on CongressBy MICHAEL D. SHEARPublished: September 1, 2013

WASHINGTON — In President Obama’s telling, Congress plays host to an “endless parade of distractions and political posturing.” It is the “challenging” place where his second-term agenda meets Washington gridlock, forcing him to issue executive orders and make appeals to the public to get

anything done.Yet now the president has chosen to hand over one of his most pressing foreign policy decisions to the very crowd that has vowed to block him at every turn.

By asking Congress for authorization to retaliate against Syria for using chemical weapons, Mr. Obama has put himself at the mercy of an institution that has bedeviled his presidency for years. He has risked his credibility — at home and abroad — on a bet that Washington’s partisan divisions will take a back seat during this debate. And he has bowed to the reality that some of the loudest demands for a Syria vote have come from his allies on Capitol Hill.

“You go to war with the Congress you have, not the Congress you wish you had,” said Matt Bennett, a former senior aide to President Bill Clinton. “He doesn’t have a Congress he can trust, but he feels that this is weighty enough that the Congress should be involved.”

The week ahead will feature a high-stakes lobbying effort by the administration for military action, some of it classified and behind closed doors, even as lawmakers trickle back to Washington from their summer break.

Despite assurances on the talk shows by Secretary of State John Kerry that Congress will approve action, early indications suggest that the Syria debate may face a version of the paralyzing politics that have repeatedly blocked Mr. Obama’s legislative proposals on gun control, immigration, climate change, expanded preschool, infrastructure spending, taxes, housing and the federal budget.

That could be especially true in the House, where a coalition of Tea Party conservatives, liberal Democrats and libertarians already appears to be preparing to oppose the use of military force in Syria. And even some senators began

lining up to announce their opposition well ahead of the start of a debate in that chamber.

Senator James M. Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma, said he would vote “no” and predicted that lawmakers would not give the president the authorization that he seeks. “I don’t think they will,” Mr. Inhofe said in an appearance on “Fox News Sunday.”

Mr. Obama’s willingness to place his faith in lawmakers is particularly unexpected for a president who has spent much of his second term trying to find creative ways to work around their judgment.

When Congress refused to approve new spending on infrastructure projects, he announced a faster process for getting federal permits. When it balked at new gun laws, he signed more than 20 executive actions to keep guns from criminals and people with mental illnesses. In his State of the Union, he pledged to enact new rules to combat climate change.

“If Congress won’t act soon to protect future generations, I will,” Mr. Obama said, promising executive actions to reduce pollution.

In speeches across the country on housing and education, every mention of the need for Congressional approval for his proposals has become a reliable punch line. In Scranton, Penn., last month, the audience laughed when Mr. Obama said that some of his proposals for college tuition would require action from Congress.

“That’s always challenging,” Mr. Obama agreed.

Earlier, in Galesburg, Ill., he laid out an economic vision for his last three years and said, “We’re going to do everything we can, wherever we can, with or without Congress, to make

things happen.”

White House officials are betting that a debate about attacking Syria will be different, and that Congress will not shrink from what Mr. Obama says is the need to hold the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, accountable for gassing his own citizens. By demanding a vote, the president is essentially asking Congress to own the decision to go to war.

David Axelrod, a former senior adviser to the president, said he hoped members of Congress would treat the issue of a military attack differently than they had many domestic issues.

“It would be beyond tragic if, on an issue like this, people started making political calculations about damaging the president,” Mr. Axelrod said. “He’s chosen to put his faith, not necessarily in the Congress, but in our laws and traditions. It’ll be an interesting week to see how that works out.”

Dan Pfeiffer, the president’s senior adviser, said that “the fact of divided government and polarized politics is exactly why it is so important that Congress play a role in such an important decision for our country.”

In 2011, Mr. Obama drew bipartisan criticism for not asking Congress for authorization to participate in an air campaign in Libya that lasted for weeks. The president and his lawyers argued that American law did not require a vote in Congress for the effort, which was aimed at preventing Muammar el-Qaddafi, the Libyan leader, from killing rebels in his country.

Mr. Obama has at least one legislative advantage in the Syria debate: Congressional leaders, including the House speaker, John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio, have already pledged to schedule an up-or-down vote in both chambers. That is more than the president often gets in the House, where Mr.

Boehner frequently blocks a floor vote on the president’s agenda.

But despite his first-term victories on health care and financial regulation, Mr. Obama is not a president with a keen sense of how to easily move his ideas through a reluctant Congress. With the Syria vote, he must find a way to ensure victory without setting a precedent that requires him — and future presidents — to do the same before every strike.

Within moments of Mr. Obama’s surprise announcement on Saturday, even lawmakers who support military action against Syria expressed doubt about the outcome of a Congressional vote. Representative Peter T. King, Republican of New York, said on “Fox News Sunday” that the president’s hesitation represented a “clear failure of leadership.”

Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, demanded even bolder military action against Syria than Mr. Obama is contemplating. Mr. McCain said he might oppose the use of force unless the president agreed to a wider military effort. But agreeing to that would almost certainly undermine support among many Democrats and some libertarians.

And even Mr. Obama’s call for a “narrow, limited action” has some liberal Democrats worried. Senator Christopher S. Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, said he entered the debate “as a skeptic” and said he was not convinced that it was a good idea to launch missiles against the Syrian government.

“Will a U.S. attack make the situation better for the Syrian people or worse?” he asked on “Meet the Press.”

The outcome of that debate may help determine Mr. Obama’s foreign policy legacy, which now is partly in the hands of his adversaries in Congress. In a statement on Saturday, Senator

Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, hinted at the political impact for the president if Congress refuses to give him the permission he wants.

“The president’s role as commander in chief,” Mr. McConnell said, “is always strengthened when he enjoys the expressed support of the Congress.”

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A war the Pentagon doesn’t want

By Robert H. Scales, Friday, September 6, 1:06 AM

Robert H. Scales, a retired Army major general, is a former commandant of the U.S. Army War College.

The tapes tell the tale. Go back and look at images of our nation’s most senior soldier, Gen. Martin Dempsey, and his body language during Tuesday’s Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings on Syria. It’s pretty obvious that Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, doesn’t want this war. As Secretary of State John Kerry’s thundering voice and arm-waving redounded in rage against Bashar al-Assad’s atrocities, Dempseywas largely (and respectfully) silent.

Dempsey’s unspoken words reflect the opinions of most serving military leaders. By no means do I profess to speak on behalf of all of our men and women in uniform. But I can justifiably share the sentiments of those inside the Pentagon and elsewhere who write the plans and develop strategies for fighting our wars. After personal exchanges with dozens of active and retired soldiers in recent days, I feel confident that what follows represents the overwhelming opinion of serving professionals who have been intimate witnesses to the unfolding events that will lead the United States into its next war.

They are embarrassed to be associated with the amateurism of the Obama administration’s attempts to craft a plan that makes strategic sense. None of the White House staff has any experience in war or understands it. So far, at least, this path to war violates every principle of war, including the element of surprise, achieving mass and having a clearly defined and obtainable objective.

They are repelled by the hypocrisy of a media blitz that warns against the

return of Hitlerism but privately acknowledges that the motive for risking American lives is our “responsibility to protect” the world’s innocents. Prospective U.S. action in Syria is not about threats to American security. The U.S. military’s civilian masters privately are proud that they are motivated by guilt over slaughters in Rwanda, Sudan and Kosovo and not by any systemic threat to our country.

They are outraged by the fact that what may happen is an act of war and a willingness to risk American lives to make up for a slip of the tongue about “red lines.” These acts would be for retribution and to restore the reputation of a president. Our serving professionals make the point that killing more Syrians won’t deter Iranian resolve to confront us. The Iranians have already gotten the message.

Our people lament our loneliness. Our senior soldiers take pride in their past commitments to fight alongside allies and within coalitions that shared our strategic goals. This war, however, will be ours alone.

They are tired of wannabe soldiers who remain enamored of the lure of bloodless machine warfare. “Look,” one told me, “if you want to end this decisively, send in the troops and let them defeat the Syrian army. If the nation doesn’t think Syria is worth serious commitment, then leave them alone.” But they also warn that Syria is not Libya or Serbia. Perhaps the United States has become too used to fighting third-rate armies. As the Israelis learned in 1973, the Syrians are tough and mean-spirited killers with nothing to lose.

Our military members understand and take seriously their oath to defend the constitutional authority of their civilian masters. They understand that the United States is the only liberal democracy that has never been ruled by its military. But today’s soldiers know war and resent civilian policymakers who want the military to fight a war that neither they nor their loved ones will experience firsthand.

Civilian control of the armed services doesn’t mean that civilians

shouldn’t listen to those who have seen war. Our most respected soldier president, Dwight Eisenhower, possessed the gravitas and courage to say no to war eight times during his presidency. He ended the Korean War and refused to aid the French in Indochina; he said no to his former wartime friends Britain and France when they demanded U.S. participation in the capture of the Suez Canal. And he resisted liberal democrats who wanted to aid the newly formed nation of South Vietnam. We all know what happened after his successor ignored Eisenhower’s advice. My generation got to go to war.

Over the past few days, the opinions of officers confiding in me have changed to some degree. Resignation seems to be creeping into their sense of outrage. One officer told me: “To hell with them. If this guy wants this war, then let him have it. Looks like no one will get hurt anyway.”

Soon the military will salute respectfully and loose the hell of hundreds of cruise missiles in an effort that will, inevitably, kill a few of those we wish to protect. They will do it with all the professionalism and skill we expect from the world’s most proficient military. I wish Kerry would take a moment to look at the images from this week’s hearings before we go to war again.

Read more at PostOpinions: Dana Milbank: The White House’s Syria secrets Anne Applebaum: Obama’s mixed messages on Syria E.J. Dionne Jr: Syria and the return of dissent David Ignatius: Syria nears a turning point Greg Sargent: Why House Dems think Syria resolution could still pass Robert J. Samuelson: Syria and the myth that Americans are ‘war weary’

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U.S. weapons reaching Syrian rebels

By Ernesto Londoño and Greg Miller, Thursday, September 12, 3:30 AM

The CIA has begun delivering weapons to rebels in Syria, ending months of delay in lethal aid that had been promised by the Obama administration, according to U.S. officials and Syrian figures. The shipments began streaming into the country over the past two weeks, along with separate deliveries by the State Department of vehicles and other gear — a flow of material that marks a major escalation of the U.S. role in Syria’s civil war.

The arms shipments, which are limited to light weapons and other munitions that can be tracked, began arriving in Syria at a moment of heightened tensions over threats by President Obama to order missile strikes to punish the regime of Bashar al-Assad for his alleged use of chemical weapons in a deadly attack near Damascus last month.

The arms are being delivered as the United States is also shipping new types of nonlethal gear to rebels. That aid includes vehicles, sophisticated communications equipment and advanced combat medical kits.

U.S. officials hope that, taken together, the weapons and gear will boost the profile and prowess of rebel fighters in a conflict that started about 21 / 2 years ago.

Although the Obama administration signaled months ago that it would increase aid to Syrian rebels, the efforts have lagged because of the logistical challenges involved in delivering equipment in a war zone and officials’ fears that any assistance could wind up in the hands of jihadists. Secretary of State John F. Kerry had promised in April that the nonlethal aid would start flowing “in a matter of weeks.”

The delays prompted several senior U.S. lawmakers to chide the Obama administration for not moving more quickly to aid the Syrian opposition

after promising lethal assistance in June. The criticism has grown louder amid the debate over whether Washington should use military force against the Syrian regime, with some lawmakers withholding support until the administration committed to providing the rebels with more assistance.

Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), who has pressed the Obama administration to do more to help the rebels, said he felt embarrassed when he met with Syrians along the Turkish border three weeks ago.

“It was humiliating,” he said in an interview Wednesday night. “The president had announced that we would be providing lethal aid, and not a drop of it had begun. They were very short on ammunition, and the weapons had not begun to flow.”

The latest effort to provide aid is aimed at supporting rebel fighters who are under the command of Gen. Salim Idriss, according to officials, some of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because part of the initiative is covert. Idriss is the commander of the Supreme Military Council, a faction of the disjointed armed opposition.

U.S. officials, speaking about the provision of nonlethal aid, said they are determined to increase the cohesion and structure of the rebel fighting units.

“This doesn’t only lead to a more effective force, but it increases its ability to hold coalition groups together,” said Mark S. Ward, the State Department’s senior adviser on assistance to Syria, who coordinates nonlethal aid to rebels from southern Turkey. “They see their leadership is having some impact.”

U.S. officials decided to expand nonlethal assistance to Syria’s armed rebels after they delivered more than 350,000 high-calorie U.S. military food packets through the Supreme Military Council in May. The distribution gave U.S. officials confidence that it was possible to limit aid to select rebel units in a battlefield where thousands of fighters share

al-Qaeda’s ideology, U.S. officials said.

Khaled Saleh, a spokesman for the Syrian Opposition Coalition, said Washington’s revamped efforts are welcome but insufficient to turn the tide of the civil war between rebels and forces loyal to Assad.

“The Syrian Military Council is receiving so little support that any support we receive is a relief,” he said. “But if you compare what we are getting compared to the assistance Assad receives from Iran and Russia, we have a long battle ahead of us.”

‘It’s better than nothing’

While the State Department is coordinating nonlethal aid, the CIA is overseeing the delivery of weaponry and other lethal equipment to the rebels. An opposition official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss covert arms transfers, said U.S. intelligence personnel have begun delivering long-promised light weapons and ammunition to rebel groups in the past couple of weeks.

The weaponry “doesn’t solve all the needs the guys have, but it’s better than nothing,” the opposition official said. He added that Washington remains reluctant to give the rebels what they most desire: antitank and antiaircraft weapons.

The CIA shipments are to flow through a network of clandestine bases in Turkey and Jordan that were expanded over the past year as the agency sought to help Middle Eastern allies, including Saudi Arabia and Qatar, direct weapons to moderate Syrian rebel forces.

The CIA declined to comment.

The distribution of vehicles and communications equipment is part of an effort to direct U.S. aid to Syrian rebels in a more assertive, targeted manner. Before Ward established a team of about two dozen diplomats and aid workers in southern Turkey, Washington was doing little more

than paying for truckloads of food and medicine for Syrian rebels. U.S. officials concede that the shipments often went to the most accessible, and not necessarily the neediest, places.

Boosting moderate factions

In addition to boosting support for rebels under the command of Idriss, who speaks fluent English and taught at a military academy before defecting from the Syrian army last year, U.S. officials in southern Turkey are using aid to promote emerging moderate leaders in towns and villages in rebel-held areas. Across much of the north, Syrians have begun electing local councils and attempting to rebuild communities devastated by war.

Ward’s team — working primarily out of hotel lobbies — has spent the past few months studying the demographics and dynamics of communities where extremists are making inroads. Targeted U.S. aid, he said, can be used to empower emerging local leaders who are moderate and to jump-start basic services while dimming the appeal of extremists.

“We feel we’re able to get these local councils off to a good start,” said Ward, a veteran U.S. Agency for International Development official who has worked in Libya, Afghanistan and Pakistan. “We vet individuals who are getting our assistance to make sure they are not affiliated with terror organizations.”

The assistance to local communities includes training in municipal management as well as basic infrastructure such as garbage trucks, ambulances and firetrucks. The areas receiving this aid are carefully selected, U.S. officials said, noting that extremist groups, including Jabhat al-Nusra, are delivering services to communities newly under rebel control.

“If you see new firetrucks and ambulances in places where al-Nusra is trying to win hearts and minds, this might not be a coincidence,” said a U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to explain details

of a sensitive strategy.

The initiatives are part of a $250 million effort to support moderate factions of the Syrian opposition. Of that, the United States has earmarked $26.6 million in aid for the Supreme Military Council. The delivery that began this week does not include items that the rebels have long identified as priorities: night-vision goggles and body armor.

Mohammed Ghanem, director of government relations at the Syrian American Council, which supports the opposition, said the U.S. initiatives are steps in the right direction after years of inaction and misguided policies.

“We’ve definitely seen a structural and conceptual evolution in terms of their understanding of what’s going on on the ground,” he said in an interview. “On the other hand, we’re always lagging behind. We’re not leading. Developments are always like six months ahead of us.”

Ghanem said the effect of U.S. assistance is limited by the number of proxies that Washington must use to deliver it. U.S. officials in Turkey rely on a network of contractors and subcontractors to deliver the aid.

Ward said he hopes the assistance efforts will position the United States to have strong relationships in a postwar Syria.

“When you finally have a free Syrian government, you will know them and they will know us,” Ward said. “We will have been working with them week after week, month after month. These won’t be strangers.”

U.S. ties in Persian Gulf at risk as Obama allows space for Russian-Syrian plan

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By Loveday Morris, Published: September 11 E-mail the writer

BEIRUT — The United States risks damaging relations with Persian Gulf states as it warily embraces a Russian initiative for Syria to relinquish its chemical arsenal, analysts say, with Sunni monarchies fearful that the U.S. pullback from military strikes will bolster President Bashar al-Assad and the influence in the region of his ally Iran.

Disappointment at the decision could further cool relations with gulf countries already frustrated by a lack of U.S. leadership on Syria during the 21 / 2-year-long conflict there. Increasingly sharp statements from the normally imperturbable gulf nations reflect the growing sense of unease.

Saudi Arabia, which is spearheading military support for the Syrian rebels, had publicly backed the idea of U.S. strikes,

and the rebels themselves had said they hoped to capitalize on any action — however narrowly targeted — to gain ground against government forces.

For gulf states including Saudi Arabia, a longtime U.S. ally, the fight to oust Assad plays into a wider regional struggle against the influence of Shiite Iran. And many in the region fear that capitulating to Russia’s plan may do the opposite, bolstering Assad and his allies. Kuwait and Qatar are among those that have signed a White House-sponsored statement condemning Syria for the alleged chemical weapons attack Aug. 21 and calling for a robust international response.

“The gulf feels misled,” said Mustafa Alani, a Geneva-based security analyst with the Gulf Research Center, referring to the U.S. shift. “Certainly, there’s a fear that this means Iran will be much stronger. Strategically speaking, the Iranian position is going to be enhanced in the region.”

One of the main worries for the Gulf Cooperation Council, he added, is “that Syria and its allies have gained the upper hand.”

At a summit of the council’s six member countries in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, on Tuesday night, Bahraini Foreign Minister Khalid bin Ahmad al-Khalifa called for “deterrent measures” against Syria, telling reporters that the Russian proposal is “all about chemical weapons but does not stop the bloodshed.”

The statement issued at the summit “expressed deep disappointment and could be taken as an indirect criticism of the U.S.,” Alani said.

The cooling comes as the United States finds its other

traditional alliances in the region weakened in the wake of the Arab Spring. The gulf countries, long mistrustful of the Muslim Brotherhood, have backed Egypt’s new interim government, while the United States has greeted it with caution.

Although analysts see little likelihood that economic and defense ties between Washington and its allies in the region will change significantly, some say gulf states, including Saudi Arabia, might attempt to diversify their strategic relationships and strengthen regional ties in an effort to counter Iran.

“This de-escalation has proved that the priorities for these states and the U.S. are different,” said Ayham Kamel, an analyst with the New York-based Eurasia Group. “Privately, it will reinforce existing tensions between the gulf and the U.S. regarding their partnerships and what they entail — there will be questions over the U.S. ability to help counter Iran, protect the structure of these regimes and provide broader security.”

The Gulf Cooperation Council’s skeptical position on the Russian plan contrasts with that of the wider 22-member Arab League, which has voiced support for it. The proposal has also won initial backing from Europe, but Turkey, a staunch supporter of the Syrian opposition, has said it would amount to a “green light” for more massacres, according to comments by Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu published in the local media Wednesday.

Senate shelves resolution on military strike against Syria, deferring to diplomacy

By Karen DeYoung, Ed O’Keefe and Colum Lynch, Published: September 11

The Senate is shelving for now a resolution to authorize the use of force against Syria, deferring to diplomatic efforts as Secretary of State John F. Kerry prepares for a potentially crucial meeting Thursday with his Russian counterpart in Geneva on a proposal to disarm Syria’s chemical weapons.

Announcing the move on the Senate floor Wednesday afternoon, Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) said, “We’ve agreed on a way forward based on the president’s speech last night.” He referred to President Obama’s nationally televised address in which he said he would seize the diplomatic opening offered by the Russians, while also arguing that the United States must retaliate for a Syrian chemical weapons attack last month if the disarmament effort fails.

Reid said the Senate would move on so as “not to tread water” on the Syrian issue. But talks on the wording of a new use-of-force resolution against Syria will continue among members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and other senior senators who are often involved in foreign affairs and military policy.

Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov will try to forge agreement on how to launch — and enforce — an international effort to transfer and destroy Syria’s arsenal of chemical weapons, which the government of President Bashar al-Assad allegedly used on Aug. 21 to kill more than 1,400 civilians in rebel-held or contested areas outside Damascus.

Although Russia proposed the international effort Monday — and quickly elicited backing from Syria — Lavrov and President Vladimir Putin just as quickly rejected a French proposal for a U.N. Security Council resolution to establish a legally binding chemical inspection regime, backed by the authorization to use force if Syria did not comply.

Putin called the threat of military action “unacceptable” and said a weapons deal would work only if the United States and its allies

renounced using force against Syria.

In his speech Tuesday night, Obama told Americans that he would try one last time to eliminate the outlawed weapons through diplomacy. But if that effort fails, he said, the United States must be willing to launch military strikes that would degrade Assad’s ability to use such weapons.

“Our ideals and principles, as well as our national security, are at stake in Syria, along with our leadership of a world where we seek to ensure that the worst weapons will never be used.” Obama said.

Obama’s much-anticipated speech drew little reaction from world leaders overnight and mixed responses at home.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said Wednesday that the White House should put a very short deadline on negotiations with Russia — perhaps 48 or 72 hours — and added that Russia’s opposition to the initial attempt to draft a Security Council resolution is a bad sign.

“Put me down as extremely skeptical,” McCain said at a Wall Street Journal media breakfast. “The president was arguing for action and at the same time arguing for a pause.”

The purpose of Thursday’s meeting between Kerry and Lavrov is to make sure that what Russia has in mind for Syria’s weapons is comprehensive and verifiable in the midst of a protracted civil war, a senior State Department official said, and to make clear that the United States and its partners insist that the proposal includes consequences if Syria does not comply.

“We’re waiting for that proposal,” Kerry told a House committee Tuesday, “but we’re not waiting for long. We will take a hard look at it, but it has to be swift, it has to be real, and it has to be verifiable. . . . If the U.N. Security Council seeks to be the vehicle to make it happen, well, then, it can’t be a debating society.”

Russia initially called for an emergency Security Council meeting to discuss the standoff over including military authorizations in the U.N. proposal. But officials agreed after a telephone conversation between Kerry and Lavrov that the two diplomats instead should meet one-on-one.

Russia has handed over to the United States a plan for implementing international control over Syrian chemical weapons and hopes that Lavrov can discuss it with Kerry when they meet, an Interfax news agency reporter, traveling with Lavrov in Kazakhstan, wrote Wednesday.

Obama’s speech Tuesday was delivered at 9 p.m. Eastern time — after midnight in Europe and well before dawn in the Middle East. But even on Wednesday, there was little to suggest that the president’s words had sparked new thinking from the nations involved in the international debate.

French President François Hollande, who with Obama has led the push for military action, said his country remains ready to use arms if efforts to secure an international agreement fall through.

“France will remain mobilized” to punish Syria’s alleged use of poison gas, Hollande said in a statement, which also noted that France is determined “to explore all paths in the U.N. Security Council that permit the effective and verifiable control of chemical weapons present in Syria.”

China, which joined Russia in strongly opposing the idea of enforcing a disarmament agreement with the threat of military strikes, reiterated that position Wednesday. Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said China’s leaders were aware of Obama’s “relevant” speech but had not altered their views because of it.

“China always opposes the use of force or threats to use force in international relations,” Hong said. “The proposal raised by Russia offered an important opportunity to ameliorate the current intense

situation and to resolve the concerns of the international society on the Syrian chemical weapon issue. We hope that all sides will insist on solving the relevant problems via political and diplomatic measures.”

As permanent members of the Security Council, China and Russia have the ability to veto resolutions. The two countries have blocked the council from taking strong action against Syria several times during its brutal 2 1 / 2 year civil war.

Since the alleged chemical weapons attacks Aug. 21, Obama has repeatedly said that if the United Nations would not authorize action, the United States and its partners could on launch unilateral, targeted airstrikes, intended to degrade Assad’s ability to deploy chemical weapons and deter him and others from using them.

But a Wednesday editorial in the People’s Daily — the mouthpiece of China’s ruling Communist Party — emphatically warned the United States not to take military action without Security Council approval.

“Once the U.S. launches the military attack on Syria, a sovereign state, without the authorization of the Security Council of the U.N., they are going to have two wars happening the same time,” the People’s Daily said. “It’s not hard to imagine how a disaster could occur. The security situation of the Middle East is complicated and sensitive. It is easy to blast the powder keg but it is more difficult to control the situation.”

Just a day after Russia made the surprise weapons proposal and Syria immediately announced its agreement, the Western partners remained wary that it was a ploy designed to head off Obama’s plan to launch a military strike. Kerry and other senior administration officials continued previously scheduled congressional briefings to build support for what has been called a “limited” attack to punish Syria.

The U.S.-backed Syrian Opposition Coalition was unequivocal in its assessment, calling the initiative a strategy to stall for time and an inadequate response to a chemical attack.

“Crimes against humanity cannot be absolved through political concessions, or surrendering the weapons used to commit them,” the coalition said in a statement.

Although Syria is believed to have large stockpiles of chemical weapons, including mustard gas, sarin and other nerve agents, its government has never explicitly acknowledged possessing them. In a CBS interview last weekend, Assad denied that any government chemical attack had taken place. He refused to confirm the existence of the stockpiles and accused the opposition of gassing his soldiers.

But in an interview Tuesday with Lebanese media, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem said that his government would provide “information about our chemical weapons,” according to Russia’s state-funded RT television network.“We will open our storage sites and cease production. We intend to give up chemical weapons altogether.”

Moualem said Syria “fully supports” the Russian initiative and intends “to join the Chemical Weapons Convention” that renounces all chemical use.

The text of the proposed U.N. resolution was outlined Tuesday morning in Paris by Laurent Fabius, the French foreign minister. It would authorize an investigation by the International Criminal Court into war crimes perpetrated by the Assad government, according to a diplomat familiar with the text.

In addition to Lavrov’s rejection of U.N. authorization of the use of force, a Russian Foreign Ministry statement indicated that Moscow does not want a Security Council resolution at all. Instead, the statement said, Russia envisions a statement by the council’s president — who rotates and is now an Australian representative — that would “welcome” the plan to monitor and ultimately destroy Syria’s chemical weapons and call on “interested parties” to carry out the plan.

In London, British Prime Minister David Cameron told members of

Parliament that the bare-bones Russian proposal was “definitely worth exploring” but that it must be “tested out properly” to ensure it was not a “ruse.” Any Security Council resolution, he said, must include “a proper timetable, process and consequences if it’s not done.”

Just two weeks ago, Cameron appeared to become peripheral to international action on Syria, after Parliament rejected his proposal to join the United States in a military strike. But the turn of events appeared to place him back in the mix as a close U.S. partner, along with France.

The Arab League, which the United States has looked toward for support for a military strike on Syria, welcomed the Russian proposal Tuesday. Speaking at its organization’s Cairo headquarters, Arab League head Nabil Elaraby told reporters that it had always been in favor of a “political solution” to the Syrian crisis, the Associated Press reported, saying that Elaraby added, “Thank God.”

Iran, among Assad’s strongest supporters, also voiced support for the plan. Quoting Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, Iran’s deputy foreign minister for Arab and African affairs, the official Islamic Republic News Agency said that Damascus and Tehran welcomed the proposal as a way of preparing the ground for resolving the Syrian crisis through political means.

The Iranian news agency also said the deputy minister expected the entire region to be cleared of weapons of mass destruction, noting that Israel’s undeclared nuclear weapons should also be “taken into consideration.”

Lynch reported from the United Nations. Debbi Wilgoren and Anne Gearan in Washington, Michael Birnbaum in Berlin, Will Englund in Moscow and William Wan in Beijing contributed to this report.

Senate sets aside resolution on military strike against Syria

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By Karen DeYoung and Ed O’Keefe, Thursday, September 12, 2:43 AM E-mail the writersThe Senate on Wednesday at least temporarily put aside a resolution to authorize the use of force against Syria as the Obama administration appealed for patience while it explored Russia’s proposal to monitor and ultimately destroy Syria’s chemical weapons.

Some senior lawmakers continued to discuss whether to amend President Obama’s pending request for authorization to reflect the new circumstances. But Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) said the Senate would move on to other issues, as Obama had urged in his nationally televised address Tuesday night, so as “not to tread water” while the administration tests the viability of the Russian initiative.

Secretary of State John F. Kerry will take a team of weapons and disarmament experts to Geneva for meetings Thursday and Friday with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, the State Department said. Lavrov is expected to bring his team of experts to discuss a proposal that has so far been presented in only the barest terms.

“I would characterize it more as ideas than as a lengthy packet,” State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said of missives that have arrived from Moscow since Lavrov announced the offer, which received quick agreement from the Syrian government, on Monday.

“Part of this effort is to figure out how to make the destruction effort logistically and technically possible” in the midst of Syria’s raging civil war, Psaki said. “It would be challenging.”

In addition to holding Congress at bay, the administration deflected action at the U.N. Security Council, where France appeared to have jumped the gun early Tuesday with a proposed resolution tying a Syrian agreement to surrender its chemical weapons to authorization for international military action if President Bashar al-Assad reneged.

After Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that there would be no deal under the threat of military force, the five

veto-wielding council members — Russia and China on one side and Britain, France and the United States on the other — also seemed to be treading water in a closed-door meeting in New York on Wednesday. No further action was announced.

U.N. chemical weapons inspectors are expected to release a report Monday that reinforces U.S. and European claims that the Syrian government used chemical weapons against its own people, according to senior U.N.-based diplomats. The report will not directly accuse the Syrian regime, the diplomats said. But it will offer a strong circumstantial case that points in the direction of Syrian government culpability.

“I know they have gotten very rich samples, biomedical and environmental, and they have interviewed victims, doctors and nurses,” a senior Western official said. “It seems they are very happy with the wealth of evidence they got.” The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the secrecy surrounding the investigation, could not identify the specific agents detected by the U.N. team but said that “you can conclude from the type of evidence” the identity of the perpetrator.

Obama’s address Tuesday — in which he said he would test the Russian offer while keeping the threat of a U.S. military strike against Syria alive — left many perplexed.

“I really do think they’ve hurt our credibility around the world just in the muddled way that they have dealt with this Syria issue,” Sen. Bob Corker (Tenn.), the ranking Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, told CNN.

Before the Russian offer, Obama had scheduled a lunch with Republicans and the Tuesday address to press an

increasingly reluctant Congress to approve military action against the Syrian regime.

Most Republicans at the lunch, Corker said, “would have believed last night he was going to make the greater case, the strategic case for us in Syria. I heard no word — not one word of it. . . . He just cannot follow through. He cannot speak to the nation as commander in chief. He cannot speak to the world as commander in chief. He just cannot do it.”

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) was among those arguing that Obama should change his original appeal to Congress from an authorization to use force to punish Assad for chemical weapons use and deter him from doing it again, to threatening a strike if Syria cheats on an agreement to destroy its chemical weapons.

“Assad and his Russian backers . . . are unlikely to follow through if that threat does not remain credible,” Levin said in a breakfast meeting with reporters. The result, he said, would be to push them closer to an eventual political settlement of Syria’s civil war.

While the administration claimed credit for using the threat of a military strike to force Russia and Syria to the bargaining table over chemical weapons, it does not want that same threat to drive them away before a weapons deal can be tested.

“We are doing the responsible thing here,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said.

Colum Lynch at the United Nations contributed to this report.

September 11, 2013

As Obama Pauses Action, Putin Takes Center StageBy STEVEN LEE MYERS

MOSCOW — President Vladimir V. Putin has been many things to President Obama: a partner at times, an irritant more often, the host of the elusive Edward J. Snowden and “the bored kid in the back of the classroom” who offered so little on the administration’s foreign policy goals that Mr. Obama canceled plans to hold a summit meeting in Moscow last week.

Yet suddenly Mr. Putin has eclipsed Mr. Obama as the world leader driving the agenda in the Syria crisis. He is offering a potential, if still highly uncertain, alternative to what he has vocally criticized as America’s militarism and reasserted Russian interests in a region where it had been marginalized since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Although circumstances could shift yet again, Mr. Putin appears to have achieved several objectives, largely at Washington’s expense. He has handed a diplomatic lifeline to his longtime ally in Syria, President Bashar al-Assad, who not long ago appeared at risk of losing power and who President Obama twice said must step down. He has stopped Mr. Obama from going around the United Nations Security Council, where Russia holds a veto, to assert American priorities unilaterally.

More generally, Russia has at least for now made itself indispensable in containing the conflict in Syria, which

Mr. Putin has argued could ignite Islamic unrest around the region, even as far as Russia’s own restive Muslim regions, if it is mismanaged. He has boxed Mr. Obama into treating Moscow as an essential partner for much of the next year, if Pentagon estimates of the time it will take to secure Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile are accurate.

“Putin probably had his best day as president in years yesterday,” Ian Bremmer, the president of Eurasia Group, a political risk consultancy, said in a conference call on Wednesday, “and I suspect he’s enjoying himself right now.”

In an Op-Ed article in The New York Times released on Wednesday, Mr. Putin laid down a strong challenge to Mr. Obama’s vision of how to address the turmoil, arguing that a military strike risked “spreading the conflict far beyond Syria’s borders” and would violate international law, undermining postwar stability.

“It is alarming that military intervention in internal conflicts in foreign countries has become commonplace for the United States,” Mr. Putin wrote. “Is it in America’s long-term interest? I doubt it.”

When Mr. Putin returned to the presidency a year ago, he moved aggressively to stamp out a growing protest movement and silence competing and independent voices. He shored up his position at home but, as his government promoted nationalism with a hostile edge, passed antigay legislation, locked up illegal immigrants in a city camp, kept providing arms to the Syrian government and ultimately gave refuge to the leaker Mr. Snowden, Mr. Putin was increasingly seen in the West as

a calloused, out-of-touch modern-day czar.

Now he appears to be relishing a role as a statesman. His spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, said in an interview that the Russian president was not seeking “ownership of the initiative,” but wanted only to promote a political solution to head off a wider military conflict in the Middle East.

“It’s only the beginning of the road,” Mr. Peskov said, “but it’s a very important beginning.”

To get started, Mr. Putin sent his foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, to Geneva on Thursday to meet with Secretary of State John Kerry, in hopes of hammering out the myriad logistical details of putting a sprawling network of chemical sites under international control in the middle of a deadly civil war.

Even that step was another indication of just how much the circumstances have changed in such a short time. Only a week ago, Mr. Putin was accusing Mr. Kerry of lying to Congress about the presence of militants allied with Al Qaeda in Syria. “He’s lying,” he said in televised remarks. “And he knows he’s lying. It’s sad.”

On Wednesday, when Russia submitted a package of proposals to the Americans and others ahead of that meeting in Geneva, Mr. Peskov again used the opportunity to try to paint Russia as the peacemaker to the United States’ war maker. Mr. Peskov declined to release details of the plan, other than to say Russia’s most important condition was that Syria’s willingness to give up its weapons could only be tested if the United States refrained from the retaliation Mr. Obama has threatened. “Any strike will make this impossible,” Mr.

Peskov said.

From the start of the war two and a half years ago, Russia has been Syria’s strongest backer, using its veto repeatedly to block any meaningful action at the Security Council. While Russia has ties to the country dating to the Soviet era, including its only naval base left outside of the former Soviet republics, Mr. Putin’s primary goal is not preserving Mr. Assad’s government — despite arms sales that account for billions of dollars — as much as thwarting what he considers to be unbridled American power to topple governments it opposes.

Mr. Putin’s defense of Syria, including continuing assertions that the rebels, not government forces, had used chemical weapons, has at times made him seem intent on opposing the United States regardless of any contrary facts or evidence. Russia has long had the support of China at the Security Council, but Mr. Putin had won support for his position by exploiting the divisions that appeared between the United States and its allies. That was especially true after Britain’s Parliament refused to endorse military action, a step Mr. Putin described as mature.

He also slyly voiced encouragement when leaders of Russia’s Parliament suggested they go to the United States to lobby Congress to vote against the authorization Mr. Obama sought — something he himself would deride as unacceptable interference if the table were reversed.

Mr. Putin’s palpable hostility to what he views as the supersized influence of the United States around the world explains much of the anti-American sentiment that

he and his supporters have stoked since he returned as president last year after serving four years as prime minister under his anointed successor, Dmitri A. Medvedev. It was under Mr. Medvedev that Russia abstained in a Security Council vote to authorize the NATO intervention in Libya that ultimately toppled that country’s dictator, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. Mr. Putin has made it clear that he would not repeat what most here consider a mistake that unleashed a wave of extremism that has spread across the region.

For now, Mr. Putin succeeded in forcing the international debate over Syria back to the Security Council, where Russia’s veto gives it a voice in any international response. With Russia’s relations with Europe increasingly strained over economic pressure and political issues, the Security Council gives Russia a voice in shaping geopolitics.

At the same time, Mr. Putin carries the risk of Russia again having to veto any security resolution that would back up the international control over Syria’s weapons with the threat of force, as France proposed.

Not surprisingly, given the Kremlin’s control over most media here, Mr. Putin’s 11th-hour gambit was nonetheless widely applauded. “The Russian president has become a hero in the world these days,” the newscast of NTV began on Wednesday night before going on to note that Mr. Putin should be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize if he averted the American strike.

There was also satisfaction that it was Mr. Putin who gave an American president whom he clearly distrusts a way out of a political and diplomatic crisis of his own

making. Aleksei K. Pushkov, the chairman of the lower house of Parliament’s foreign affairs committee, wrote on Twitter that Mr. Obama should gratefully grab Russia’s proposal with “both hands.”

“It gives him a chance not to start another war, not to lose in the Congress and not to become the second Bush,” Mr. Pushkov said.

Andrew Roth contributed reporting from Moscow, and Rick Gladstone from New York.

September 11, 2013

A Rare Public View of Obama’s Pivots on Policy in Syria ConfrontationBy PETER BAKER

WASHINGTON — When President Obama strode into the Rose Garden last month after a week of increasing tension over Syria’s use of chemical weapons, many assumed it was to announce that the attack that had been broadly hinted at by his own aides had begun. Instead, he turned the decision over to Congress. And when Mr. Obama appeared on television Tuesday night, a speech initially intended to promote force made the argument for diplomacy.

Over the last three weeks, the nation has witnessed a highly unusual series of pivots as a president changed course virtually in real time and on live television. Mr. Obama’s handling of his confrontation with Syria over a chemical weapons attack on civilians has been the rare instance of a commander in chief seemingly thinking out loud and changing his mind on the fly.

To aides and allies, Mr. Obama’s willingness to hit the pause button twice on his decision to launch airstrikes to punish Syria for using chemical weapons on its own people reflects a refreshing open-mindedness and a reluctance to use force that they considered all too missing under his predecessor with the Texas swagger. In this view, Mr. Obama is a nimble leader more concerned with getting the answer right than with satisfying a political class all too eager to second-guess every move.

“All the critics would like this to be easily choreographed, a straight line and end the way they’d all individually like it to end,” said David Plouffe, the president’s former senior adviser. “That’s not the way the world works for sure, especially in a situation like this. I think it speaks to his strength, which is that he’s

willing to take in new information.”

But to Mr. Obama’s detractors, including many in his own party, he has shown a certain fecklessness with his decisions first to outsource the decision to lawmakers in the face of bipartisan opposition and then to embrace a Russian diplomatic alternative that even his own advisers consider dubious. Instead of displaying decisive leadership, Mr. Obama, to these critics, has appeared reactive, defensive and profoundly challenged in standing up to a dangerous world.

“There’s absolutely no question he’s very uncomfortable being commander in chief,” Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, a Republican who worked with the White House to support force against Syria, said in an interview. “In personal meetings, he comes across very confident. I wish I could deliver a speech as well as he does. But it’s like he wants to slip the noose. It’s like watching a person who’s caged, who’s in a trap and trying to figure a way out.”

For good or ill, and there are plenty who argue both points of view, Mr. Obama represents a stark contrast in style to George W. Bush. The former president valued decisiveness and once he made a decision rarely revisited it. While he, too, changed course from time to time, Mr. Bush regularly told aides that a president should not reveal doubts because it would send a debilitating signal to his administration, troops in the field and the country at large.

Mr. Obama came to office as the anti-Bush, his candidacy set in motion by his opposition to the Iraq war amid promises to be more open to contrary advice, more

pragmatic in his policies and more contemplative in his decisions. When it came time to decide whether to send more troops to Afghanistan in 2009, he presided over three months of study and debate that even aides found excruciating at times but were presented as a more thoughtful process.

Known as a disciplined candidate and personality, Mr. Obama earned praise for boldness with the daring Special Forces operation in Pakistan that killed Osama bin Laden, although that obscured the months of secret deliberations the public did not see. He likewise expanded drone strikes against people suspected of being terrorists and until recently expressed little doubt about their wisdom and necessity.

“President Obama was elected in part because when Washington followed the conventional wisdom into Iraq, he took a different approach,” said Dan Pfeiffer, his senior adviser. “The American people appreciate the fact that he takes a thoughtful approach to these most serious of decisions.”

But Richard N. Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations and a former State Department official under Mr. Bush who broke with his old boss and has been supportive of Mr. Obama at times, is highly critical of the way he has handled Syria. “Words like ad hoc and improvised and unsteady come to mind,” Mr. Haass said. “This has been probably the most undisciplined stretch of foreign policy of his presidency.”

With the civil war in Syria, Mr. Obama has telegraphed uncertainty for two years, clearly pained by the deaths of 100,000 people yet unsure what the United States could

do about it that would succeed without dragging the country into another quagmire. He set a “red line” against the use of chemical weapons without defining what it would entail.

Once a sarin gas attack on Aug. 21 killed more than 1,400 civilians, according to American intelligence, Mr. Obama agreed that a military response was needed while making clear how much he wished it were not.

“I would much rather spend my time talking about how to make sure every 3- and 4-year-old gets a good education than I would spending time thinking about how can I prevent 3- and 4-year-olds from being subjected to chemical weapons and nerve gas,” he lamented during a visit to Sweden last week. “Unfortunately, that’s sometimes the decisions that I’m confronted with as president of the United States.”

Despite his penchant for process, he decided to ask Congress for authorization over the objections of his staff and without consulting his secretary of state, John Kerry, or his secretary of defense, Chuck Hagel. When Russia proposed averting a strike by having Syria give up its chemical weapons, Mr. Obama cautiously embraced the same concept even after Mr. Kerry had dismissed it as implausible and unworkable.

“Each time he’s done an about-face or a sharp turn, other people who kept marching in the same direction look kind of foolish,” said Peter D. Feaver, a Duke University professor who worked on the National Security Council staff under Mr. Bush and Bill Clinton. “It’s clear he didn’t fully think through the implications of going to Congress and prepare for that.”

Defenders said that too much attention was being paid to the path instead of the destination, and that if Syria gave up its chemical weapons, all history would remember is that Mr. Obama had made it happen. “I’d rather always have a president who will make the right decisions at the right time,” said Representative Steve Israel, Democrat of New York, “than a president who makes the wrong decisions because he doesn’t want to give more time.”

U.S.-Russia talks on Syria chemical arsenal begin on tense note

By Anne Gearan and Karen DeYoung, Friday, September 13, 1:31 AM

GENEVA — U.S.-Russia talks over eliminating Syria’s chemical weapons began here Thursday on a wary and stilted note, as Secretary of State John F. Kerry said U.S. military forces remain poised to attack Syria if a credible agreement is not rapidly reached and implemented.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad added to the tension by saying that he is willing to place his chemical arsenal under international control — but only if the United States stops threatening military action and arming rebel forces trying to unseat him.

Assad, in an interview with a Russian television station, said he is prepared to sign the international convention banning the weapons and would adhere to its “standard procedure” of handing over stockpile data a month later.

Kerry made clear that he had a much shorter time frame in mind and that Assad was not a party to the negotiations. “There is nothing ‘standard’ about this process,” Kerry said as he headed into an initial meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

“The words of the Syrian regime, in our judgment, are simply not enough,” he said.

After an hour-long session to outline the logistics and agenda for the talks, both men and their deputies departed for a joint dinner, while U.S. and Russian teams of technical experts stayed behind to iron out the details. A senior State Department official said the full delegations would reconvene Friday morning.

The emergency talks are aimed at laying down a blueprint for international seizure of the weapons that the United States has said Syrian forces used to gas to death more than 1,400 people last month near Damascus. Russia, Syria’s main international backer and arms supplier, offered Monday to negotiate the issue, after President Obama sent U.S. warships to the Mediterranean and asked Congress to authorize a military strike against the Syrian government for its chemical weapons use.

The legislation, an uphill battle for Obama amid lawmakers’ skepticism, is on hold pending the outcome of what are likely to be two days of talks in Geneva. The pause button also has been hit at the United Nations, where the United States, Britain and France have been readying a Security Council resolution designed to authorize the use of force if Syria does not adhere to any U.S.-Russia agreement on the weapons.

An open letter from Putin

As Kerry and Lavrov met behind closed doors, public statements flew from Moscow to Washington and back again.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, in an open letter to “the American people and their political leaders” published on the New York Times opinion pages, said any use of force was a violation of international law and would constitute an illegal “act of aggression.”

The United States, he said, was developing a habit of military intervention that had given the country an image of preferring “brute force” over democracy. Noting Obama’s reference to “American exceptionalism” during a Tuesday night address to the nation on Syria, Putin wrote, “It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation.”

“There are big countries and small countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and those still finding their way to democracy. Their policies differ, too,” he wrote.

Obama did not directly respond during brief remarks at the opening of a Cabinet meeting at the White House. He said he was “hopeful” that the Geneva talks would yield “a concrete result.”

Later, White House press secretary Jay Carney said it was “clear that President Putin has invested his credibility in transferring Assad’s chemical weapons to international control and ultimately destroying them. This is significant. Russia is Assad’s patron and protector, and the world will note whether Russia can follow through on the commitments that it’s made.”

“As for the editorial,” Carney said, “you know, we’re not surprised by President Putin’s words. But the fact is that Russia offers a stark contrast that demonstrates why America is exceptional.” Putin’s government, he added, was “isolated and alone” in backing Assad’s assertions that Syrian rebels were responsible for last month’s chemical attack.

On Capitol Hill, lawmakers were even less diplomatic. House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) said he was “insulted” by Putin’s article.

Despite the tensions, Kerry said the United States is serious “about engaging in substantive, meaningful negotiations even as our military maintains its current posture to keep up the pressure on the Assad regime.”

He added that diplomacy cannot become a delaying tactic.

“This is not a game,” he said, as the talks began in this Swiss city, once the site of historic U.S.-Russia arms-control talks and the original international covenant banning chemical weapons as a tool of war.

Kerry and Lavrov did not take questions at their joint appearance before reporters. Lavrov made a point of saying that the discussions should “move this situation from this current stage of military confrontation.”

“We proceed from the fact that the solution of this problem will make unnecessary any strike on the Syrian Arab Republic,” he said through an interpreter.

Kerry responded that it was only the threat of military action that had created the diplomatic opening and that the United States will remain ready to strike.

International inspections

In a briefing for reporters traveling with Kerry, senior State Department officials said the U.S. delegation would present the Russians with information about sites where U.S. intelligence suspects Syria’s estimated 1,000 tons of chemical weapons are stored. Officials expect the Russians to provide their own assessment, presumably with information furnished by the Syrian government.

The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said they also

expected to discuss security concerns regarding international arms inspectors. “We’ve suggested to the Russians they come prepared to discuss it, as well. It is certainly not a permissive environment,” one official said.

Farhan Haq, a spokesman for U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, told reporters that the United Nations has received a document from the Syrian government indicating its commitment to accede to the Chemical Weapons Convention. It was not clear whether the document, which he said was written in Arabic and was still being translated, included any preconditions.

“This starts the process” of becoming a member of the convention, Haq said.

Security Council members are expected to meet Monday, when Ban would brief them on the findings of a U.N. chemical weapons team that probed the Aug. 21 attack.

The inspection team was mandated only to determine whether the attack had occurred, not to affix blame. But a senior Western official at the United Nations said the inspectors collected “a wealth” of evidence that formed a circumstantial case against Assad’s forces.

In his Tuesday interview with Russia’s Rossiya 24 television, Assad said “terrorists,” the term he has long used to refer to rebel fighters, “are trying to incite a U.S. attack against Syria.” Repeating his charge that the rebels were responsible for the chemical attack, he said that “there are countries that supply chemical substances” to the Syrian opposition.

It was only Tuesday that Assad’s government acknowledged for the first time the existence of its chemical weapons stockpile. Although Assad said he had agreed to sign the arsenal over to international control, he insisted that it would happen only “when we see that the United States truly desires stability in our region and stops threatening and seeking to invade,” as well as supplying the rebels.

Kerry also met Thursday with Lakhdar Brahimi, the U.N.-Arab League envoy for Syria, and spoke by telephone with the leader of the Syrian Opposition Coalition and with Gen. Salim Idriss, the rebel military commander.

The rebels have expressed dismay at Obama’s decision to call off military strikes while the diplomacy plays out. A State Department official said Kerry made clear to them that he was seeking “tangible commitments” to “a strong, credible and enforceable agreement” and “reiterated that President Obama’s threat of military action very much remains on the table.”

No Syrians were expected to attend the Geneva negotiations.

DeYoung reported from Washington. Will Englund in Moscow, Colum Lynch at the United Nations and Ed O’Keefe in Washington contributed to this report.

Rare agreement between left and right: Obama’s foreign policy is a disasterBy Jennifer Rubin, Published: September 13 at 12:00 pmE-mail the writer

The president’s foreign policy collapse has unsettled a flock of liberal pundits. Joe Klein, for example, writes, “He willingly jumped into a bear trap of his own creation. In the process, he has damaged his presidency and weakened the nation’s standing in the world. It has  been one of the more stunning and inexplicable displays of presidential  incompetence that I’ve ever witnessed. The failure cuts straight to the heart of  a perpetual criticism of the Obama White House: that the President thinks he can  do foreign policy all by his lonesome. This has been the most closely held  American foreign-policy-making process since Nixon and Kissinger, only there’s  no Kissinger.” And no Nixon.

President Obama (Jason Reed/Reuters)

Likewise, Jeffrey Goldberg, long-time defender of Obama’s Middle East dealings, now argues: “All Assad has to do to forever stave off a punitive strike is to keep promising that he’s in the middle of giving up his chemical weapons. (No one, by the way, has addressed the fate of his biological weapons.) This is a process that could go on for months, or even years.” He warns that “if Putin and Kerry have indeed constructed, intentionally or not, an offramp for Obama, Assad can continue — with real impunity now — to slaughter civilians without foreign interference. He may be Hitler, as administration officials and their surrogates keep suggesting, but a Hitler we’re content to see remain in power. The opposition in Syria will see all of this as a betrayal, and could become further radicalized as a result.”The disdain for Obama’s Syria stumbling extends to foreign policy professional from the center-left, including those who once worked for him. Ex-State Department official Rosa Brooks attacks her former boss: “Like millions of other Americans, I listened to President Obama’s speech last night with a sense of growing dismay. We wanted decisiveness; we got delay. We wanted clarity; we got contradictions. We wanted strategy; we got simplistic moralism. We wanted

principle; we got peevish pedantry. We wanted honesty; we got hypocrisy.”Leslie Gelb, the embodiment of Georgetown conventional wisdom, likewise declares: “Well, President Obama ‘mixed in’ in Syria two years ago without the semblance of a coherent strategy. It’s a sorry record. Mr. Obama’s reputation and clout have suffered.” He writes, “The main lesson to be learned from the last two years is that whatever happens with these resolutions, the Obama White House must now have a coherent strategy for Syria. At this moment, no strategy can solve the Syria problem. Indeed, promoting yet another new one would be a mistake. The only viable strategy at this point is to help prevent things from getting worse.”By far the most entertaining, however, is David Rothkopf. He muses:<a target="_blank" href="http://adclick.g.doubleclick.net/aclk%253Fsa%253DL%2526ai%253DBVkwl-0MzUrbnCI2--waDuYDwBZKssNQDAAAAEAEgADgAWLrl0MlqYLnovoDUAYIBF2NhLXB1Yi0zNjcxMzQ2NTUxMjIxNTA5sgEWd3d3Lndhc2hpbmd0b25wb3N0LmNvbboBCWdmcF9pbWFnZcgBCdoBhwFodHRwOi8vd3d3Lndhc2hpbmd0b25wb3N0LmNvbS9ibG9ncy9yaWdodC10dXJuL3dwLzIwMTMvMDkvMTMvcmFyZS1hZ3JlZW1lbnQtYmV0d2Vlbi1sZWZ0LWFuZC1yaWdodC1vYmFtYXMtZm9yZWlnbi1wb2xpY3ktaXMtYS1kaXNhc3Rlci_AAgLgAgDqAiI3MDEvd3BuaS5vcGluaW9ucy9ibG9nLy9yaWdodC10dXJu-AKB0h6QA8gGmAPgA6gDAdAEkE7gBAGgBh8%2526num%253D0%2526sig%253DAOD64_1_SyrJts3G3kEMyvz-YeaZ7Z5SAw%2526client%253Dca-pub-3671346551221509%2526adurl%253Dhttps://account.washingtonpost.com/acquisition/?promo=dgboxad&wpsrc=CM0000062"><img src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/imgad?id=CICAgMDO3_bj3QEQARgBMgh-wml_WQfd7Q" width="300" height="250" border="0" alt="" galleryimg="no"></a>

Every so often, a blind squirrel finds a nut. This is unquestionably good news for the squirrel, provided that what he has found is actually a nut and not some other less savory thing lying around on the forest floor. But the same blindness that afflicted the squirrel before his fortunate discovery will almost certainly make it impossible for him to see the potential consequences of his seeming good fortune. Which, if the squirrel is the president of the United States and the nut is the hint of an opportunity to find a diplomatic fix for the problem of chemical weapons in Syria, may not be a good thing for U.S. interests in the Middle East or around the world.Even the most charitable of interpretations by the president’s most loyal supporters (and I voted for him twice, so I count myself in that group) would have to rank the past couple of months as among the worst of his administration in terms of national security policy mismanagement. From the muddle of our Egypt policies to the ham-fisted and tone-deaf response to the NSA scandal and its international aftershocks; from the first contradictions around the president’s improvised and then seemingly regretted “red line in Syria” to Tuesday night’s “big speech,” which was flat, familiar, and contradictory, and ended in a punt to an indefinite future, the otherwise often self-assured White House’s recent handling of our international policies has been, well, a bit squirrely.Conservatives finally have company in their contempt for the current president’s national security debacles, but this is more than Schadenfreude. There are the seeds of some sort of bipartisan agreement on at least what we should not do in the Middle East and elsewhere. We should not waffle, let problems fester or imagine we can let others take up our slack. We should not imagine the

threat of violent jihadism is behind us, or that knocking off a few terrorist leaders is a substitute for a coherent foreign policy.There is a growing understanding that we need to return to some more sober, deliberate policy in the Middle East which defends our interests consistently, providing foes and friends with a clear view of what American will and will not tolerate. The “freedom agenda” doesn’t have to be an obscenity, as it was for the left under President George W. Bush; we can now all recognize that it is in our interests to support non-jihadi nations and groups who will provide a more stable environment and a decent life for their people. We can reach consensus that failed states invite terrorism and instability that will not be contained within national borders.That does not mean we utilize military action primarily or frequently, but instead requires a very long-term commitment to nurturing tolerant, free societies and robustly opposing tyrannical ones. This is not an endeavor that will take months or merely a couple of years.We can all agree that we must go outside terribly flawed and counterproductive international bodies to act (economically, militarily, or diplomatically) alone if need be or with other countries with similar interests (this does not include Russia). Legitimacy comes not from Turtle Bay, but from our own Constitution and our defense of freedom and determination to abate violence and repression. We can reach consensus that it is bad for America and the world if Russia is top dog in the Middle East. We can insist on electing a president prepared to lead.There will be plenty to disagree about on the details and execution of post-Obama foreign policy. But in seeing the

worst and most clumsy foreign policy apparatus in American history, maybe we can find a smarter, bipartisan policy that can repair American stature and undo the damage of the last 4 1/2 years.