President Obama’s Weekly Address: Calling for Limited Military Action in Syria
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SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) — President Obama spent much of this week urging lawmakers and world leaders to back his plans for limited and targeted military action in Syria. In his weekly address, the president reinforced the need for such steps in order to hold the Assad regime accountable for alleged chemical attacks in August.
Obama called the Aug. 21 incident “the worst chemical weapons attack of the 21st century,” and emphasized the belief that the Syrian government was to be held responsible.
“This was not only a direct attack on human dignity; it is a serious threat to our national security,” he said. “There’s a reason governments representing 98 percent of the world’s people have agreed to ban the use of chemical weapons.”
Use of the weapons is not only inhumane, Obama elaborated, but they pose a danger with the possibility of falling into the hands of terrorist groups.
Choosing to take action would be a decision made as a nation, he said, one that wouldn’t put American boots on the ground.
Prosposing military force was “not a decision I made lightly,” he asserted, and it would “not be another Iraq or Afghanistan.”
Opponents to Obama’s plan voiced concern earlier this week over who the U.S. would be arming in Syria and questioned how air strikes would help rebel groups.
The president said his plans do not call for open-ended intervention, rather limited action “both in time and scope – designed to deter the Syrian government from gassing its own people again and degrade its ability to do so.”
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