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| Cartoon by Patrick Chappatte |
I chose this cartoon (right) because I doubt Barack Obama would ever lift a
finger against Bashar al-Assad.
The U.S. president will keep dithering, even if Iran produced “the bomb”
and nuked a city held by the Syrian president’s opponents.
I reached this conclusion after reading, scrutinizing and pondering Obama’s
remarks in the Oval Office going into his bilateral meeting with Jordan’s King
Abdullah.
When strong evidence
emerged earlier this year that Assad forces were moving chemical weapons, the
White House insisted the action did not cross the line Obama set. By “move” the
weapons, a White House spokesman said, Obama meant transferring them to a
terror group, like Hezbollah.
After the British and
French governments wrote to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon saying they had
evidence of chemical use in Syria, Obama had his secretary of state and defense
secretary say separately the intelligence regarding the attacks remained
inconclusive.
Hardly four weeks after
Obama’s March visit to Israel, where he said proof of chemical weapons use
would be a “game changer,” Israel’s senior military intelligence analyst said
the Assad regime had repeatedly used chemical weapons in the last month, and
criticized the international community for failing to respond.
With the mounting
evidence forcing Obama’s hand, the White House found nothing better in midweek
than write letters to congressmen saying, “"Our intelligence community
does assess, with varying degrees of confidence, that the Syrian regime has
used chemical weapons on a small scale in Syria, specifically, the chemical
agent sarin.”
But the letters added:
"Given the stakes involved, and what we have learned from our own recent
experiences, intelligence assessments alone are not sufficient -- only credible
and corroborated facts that provide us with some degree of certainty will guide
our decision-making."
This gets us to last night’s
round of dilly-dallying by Obama in the presence of King Abdullah.
THE PRESIDENT: I
want to welcome to the Oval Office once again King Abdullah. His Majesty
is a great friend of the United States. Jordan is a great partner to the
United States on a whole host of issues. And obviously, although we just
recently saw each other -- and I want to thank again His Majesty for the
extraordinary hospitality that he showed during our visit -- there remain a
host of very urgent issues in the region that we’re going to have an
opportunity to discuss.
First of all, I want to
congratulate His Majesty on a series of reforms that he’s initiating inside of
Jordan, and we want to find out how we can continue to be supportive and
helpful in creating greater economic opportunity and prosperity in the area.
We have been supportive
with respect to loan guarantees and other efforts, in part because we’ve also
seen King Abdullah take some very important steps to further open
democratization and entrepreneurship and economic development inside of
Jordan. We want to encourage that because we think Jordan can be an
extraordinary model for effective governance in the region.
We’re also going to
have an opportunity to talk about the Middle East peace process. And the
last time I saw King Abdullah, I’d just come out of Israel and the West Bank in
consultations with Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Abbas. And Jordan,
like the United States, has an enormous stake in peace. And we do think
that there’s a window of opportunity that needs to be seized, and so we will
both consult in how we can jumpstart serious conversations that could lead to a
peaceful settlement and both a secure Israel with normalized relations with its
neighbors and a Palestinian state that was sovereign.
Of great urgency right
now obviously is the situation in Syria. Jordan has experienced a huge
influx of refugees coming into the country from Syria, people who’ve been
displaced. Jordan historically has maintained open borders and allowed
these refugees on a humanitarian basis to come in, but it’s an enormous strain
on a small country. And we are mobilizing international support to help
with these refugees, but obviously our goal is to create a stable Syria, where
civilians are not at risk.
And we both agree that
at this point, President Assad has lost legitimacy and that we need to find a
political transition that allows a multi-sect, democratic transition to take
place so that Syria can be a place where all people can live in peace and
harmony.
This will be difficult
to accomplish. And yesterday, some of you saw that I asked my people to
brief Congress about the fact that we now have some evidence that chemical
weapons have been used on the populations in Syria. Now, these are
preliminary assessments; they’re based on our intelligence gathering. We
have varying degrees of confidence about the actual use, but there are a range
of questions around how, when, where these weapons may have been used.
So we’re going to be
pursuing a very vigorous investigation ourselves, and we’re going to be
consulting with our partners in the region as well as the international
community and the United Nations to make sure that we are investigating this as
effectively and as quickly as we can.
But I meant what I’d
said, and I will repeat that it’s, obviously, horrific as it is when mortars
are being fired on civilians and people are being indiscriminately
killed. To use potential weapons of mass destruction on civilian
populations crosses another line with respect to international norms and
international law. And that is going to be a game changer.
We have to act
prudently. We have to make these assessments deliberately. But I
think all of us, not just in the United States but around the world, recognize
how we cannot stand by and permit the systematic use of weapons like chemical
weapons on civilian populations.
So this is going to be
something that we’ll be paying a lot of attention to -- trying to confirm, and mobilize
the international community around those issues.
But in everything that
we do, we very much appreciate the kinds of support, advice, counsel, and
partnership that we have with His Majesty and the people of Jordan. And
we look forward to a fruitful consultation this afternoon.
HIS MAJESTY KING
ABDULLAH: Mr. President, thank you very much. We’re delighted to be
back here again. And may I first start off by expressing, on behalf of
myself and the delegation and people of Jordan, our heartfelt condolences on
the tremendous tragedies both in Boston for the bombings, as well as that of
Texas -- especially that of Boston. We've always stood together in our
fight against terrorism, and this is an issue that we will always be strong
partners there.
As you've mentioned,
sir, on the issue of the peace process, when you were in Jordan, we had
mentioned this is the homework stage. Jordan will continue to work very
closely with the Israelis and the Palestinians, obviously with our American
allies to see how we can bring both sides closer together.
But one of the major
concerns that brings us here to Washington together, as you alluded to, is
obviously the challenge with Syria, the fragmentation of Syrian society, which
is becoming more and more alarming.
Since your last visit
to Jordan five weeks ago, we've had over 60,000 refugees -- up to over half a
million, so we're at 10 percent of an increase of our population. We're
so grateful to the support that you and the American people have given to our country.
You couldn’t do more, quite honestly, and we're so grateful. I just
wanted to express our appreciation on behalf of myself and the Jordanian people
for that.
I think, sir, that we
are both working very hard to look for a political solution for a Syria that is
one that is, as you mentioned, inclusive so that we're bringing everybody
together, which is sort of our last hope to -- as we're now seeing the surge of
the second threat appear, which is that of militant terrorist organizations
that have risen over the past several months.
But I am confident,
with your leadership and with meetings that we will have today, that we can
find a mechanism to bring a solution -- to an end as quickly as possible.
Lastly, sir, you had
the Crown Prince of the United Arab Emirates, Mohammed bin Zayed, who is one of
our strongest strategic allies. And I know that is his position with the
United States, as well as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia -- the three of us are
working very hard in cooperation with the United States to try to find a quick
and just solution to the Syrian crisis.
So I look forward to
our discussions later this afternoon, and I hope that together we will be able
to alleviate the suffering.
PRESIDENT OBAMA:
Okay.
Q. Mr. President, why has the red line been crossed --
PRESIDENT OBAMA:
You guys all have the same question?
Q. Yes.
Q. You know that they are --
PRESIDENT OBAMA:
Hold on a second, miss -- one at a time.
What we have right now
is an intelligence assessment. And as I said, knowing that potentially
chemical weapons have been used inside of Syria doesn’t tell us when they were
used, how they were used. Obtaining confirmation and strong evidence, all
of those things we have to make sure that we work on with the international
community. And we ourselves are going to be putting a lot of resources
into focusing on this.
And I think that, in
many ways, a line has been crossed when we see tens of thousands of innocent
people being killed by a regime. But the use of chemical weapons and the
dangers that poses to the international community, to neighbors of Syria, the
potential for chemical weapons to get into the hands of terrorists -- all of
those things add increased urgency to what is already a significant security
problem and humanitarian problem in the region.
So we're going to be
working with countries like Jordan to try to obtain more direct evidence and
confirmation of this potential use. In the meantime, I've been very clear
publicly, but also privately, that for the Syrian government to utilize
chemical weapons on its people crosses a line that will change my calculus and
how the United States approaches these issues.
So this is not an on or
off switch. This is an ongoing challenge that all of us have to be
concerned about. And we're going to be working with the international
community and our partners to keep our eyes on what's happening on the ground,
to gather any evidence of potential chemical weapon use and, at the same time,
to continue to help with a moderate and inclusive opposition to help bring
about the day when the Syrian people can once again focus on living their
lives, raising their children, starting businesses, and obtaining basic freedom
and human rights.
This is going to be a
long-term proposition. This is not going to be something that is solved
easily overnight. But I know that King Abdullah is committed to trying to
find these kinds of solutions. So am I.
Thank you everybody.
