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Obama addressed Americans from the White House East Room. His performance was a salvage operation to repair what remains of his political standing at home

Move over Saint Paul, Obama on the path to Damascus



Washington, D.C.-Move over a little, Saint Paul. You are not the only one to have found light on the Road to Damascus.
President Barack Obama found it, too, but it shone to all way to Moscow and, just possibly, political salvation at home. The president addressed Americans last night on Syria’s use of chemical weapons and the offence to humanity of the killing of women and children with poison gas. He spent twelve of his sixteen minutes sketching the background of the Syrian crisis, two years of diplomatic efforts to solve it and the horrors of children writhing in agony and dying on hospital floors recorded on cell phone cameras and eyewitness. He implored Americans and the international community to stop looking away.

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He spoke of his and Secretary of State John Kerry’s diplomatic effort to find a way out danger. He spoke of Russia’s proposal to resume negotiations of an agreement that would have Syria’s President, Bashar al-Assad turn over his chemical weapons to international custody. He said this turn in Moscow would not have come about had he not prepared a military strike to punish Assad’s regime and showed his willingness to give the order. “In the space of his 16-address, Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank observed, “he was often at odds with himself….spent the first 12 minutes arguing for the merits of striking Syria – then delivered the news that he was putting action on hold.” I couldn’t have said it better. Obama said he would negotiate directly with President Vladimir Putin of Russia and Secretary of State John Kerry would negotiate with Sergei Lavrov in Geneva starting Thursday. Pressed to the edge of political impotence for the remaining three years of his second term, Obama grabbed the lifeline Russia President Vladimir Putin threw him on Monday – and he grabbed it tight. Lavrov, the foreign minister, said on Monday Russia is prepared to push Syria President Bashar al-Assad to turn over chemical weapons in his military arsenal to international control and custody if Obama will stay his hand. Obama said it was a “potentially positive development”. He would “run it to the ground,” he said. A short while later Monday afternoon, as he pitched all TV networks and justifying his need for Congressional support and acknowledging Russia’s offer of negotiations, NBC reported “Obama on the fence” about attacking Syria. ABC followed up 10 minutes later that he lost in Congress. Public opinion polls slid from under Mr. Obama’s feet by the hour, with over two thirds of Americans opposed to his Syria policy. Obama and his Democrat and Republican supporters warned congressional disapproval would endanger his and America’s credibility in the world. This raises the puzzling question: How can he lose what he has already lost with his “leading from behind” policy? How does it all relate to reality on the crucial Russia front? See what Samantha Power, US ambassador to the United Nations, said four days earlier – last Friday. Here it is: “We have exhausted the alternatives,” on Syria in the Security Council Syria well before “Assad began using chemical weapons on a small scale several times this year.” Three weeks ago, this senior Ambassador to the world’s stage, reminded us that on “August 21, after several small scale” gas attacks over the year, Assad launched “the largest chemical weapons attack in a quarter century.” There is more. During her brief appearance at the Center for American Progress, an institute run by Obama’s political campaign veterans, Ambassador Power said: “Russia, often backed by China, has blocked every single action” to stop Mr. Assad. In the last two years, she said, Russia has blocked even the UN Security Council’s press releases saying – in my shorthand, nerve gas is bad for you. What, not enough? “Believing Russia would change its position would be naïve,” Obama’s hand-picked diplomat said. Assad crossed Obama’s red line on “numerous occasions,” as Power said -- and she knows the nasty facts. Obama didn’t say boo. Senator John McCain, not every Conservative’s favorite, said Assad took his non-reaction as a “green light” – Assad did. Obama now parades the foul deed as cause for his call to cruise missiles. At first he was out to “punish” Assad. He modified it to a “Shot across the bow.” He had new degrees of severity every day and twice on Sunday, last spoken of as “unbelievably small.” Putin believes in the hard line and proved it every confrontation during all his years in power. He is a KGB veteran and Obama is a veteran of unbelievably inept, catastrophic foreign policy, as his critics and many of his friends in the media say. Syria is a Russian client, its platform for the dominant position in the Middle East has now reached in mutual trade-off status; Russia protects Assad and he is the enabler of Russia’s dominance. Will Putin throw it away? I don’t think so. Obama may even claim a diplomatic success but Putin does not change his positions -- just as Samantha Power said. Obama addressed Americans Tuesday night from the White House East Room. His performance was a salvage operation to repair what remains of his political standing at home. Location, location, location. Had it been all about Syria, diplomacy and Russia, the big, serious player in Syria, the President of the United States would have spoken, from behind his desk in the Oval Office – as all his predecessors have in times of crisis.


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Bogdan Kipling -- Bio and Archives

Bogdan Kipling is veteran Canadian journalist in Washington.

Originally posted to the U.S. capital in the early 1970s by Financial Times of Canada, he is now commenting on his eighth presidency of the United States and on international affairs.

Bogdan Kipling is a member of the House and Senate Press Galleries.


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