KERRY: WE BLEW IT
Cites O’s ‘red line’ failure to bomb Assad
Secretary of State John Kerry has admitted that President Obama’s failure to enforce his selfimposed “red line” against Syria “cost us significantly.”
“I know the cost . . . of the president’s decision when he decided not to enforce the red line through the bombing,” Kerry said Sunday at the Saban Forum in Washington, referring to Obama’s August 2012 decree that Syria using chemical weapons would be a “red line.”
In 2013, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad reportedly used sarin gas to kill more than 1,400 people.
Obama threatened to bomb Syria, but ultimately deferred the action to Congress, which declined to approve the military action.
And at the weekend forum, Kerry deflected blame away from Obama to Congress.
“People have interpreted it as his decision . . . when, in fact, he never made a decision not to bomb. He made the decision to bomb. He simply decided he had to go to Congress because . . . [then-British Prime Minister] David Cameron lost the vote in the Parliament on a Thursday, and on Friday, President Obama felt, hearing from Congress, ‘Oh, you got to come to us, you got to come to us,’ he would go there and get the decision,” Kerry said.
Yet, Kerry maintained, he him- self saved the day — sort of.
“Well, the decision wasn’t forthcoming, and in the meantime, I got a deal with [Russian Foreign Minister Sergey] Lavrov to get all of the chemical weapons out of the country,” he said.
“So, in effect, we got a better result out of not doing it, but it was the threat of doing it that brought about the result, and the lack of doing it perception-wise cost us significantly in the region, and I know that and so does the president. As much as we think it’s a misinterpretation . . . it doesn’t matter. It cost. Perception can often just be the reality.”
Others have argued that Kerry was outmaneuvered by the Kremlin, since he first broached the idea that Assad could avoid an attack by handing over the chemical weapons.
Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates has called the abrupt policy change a sad chapter in US diplomacy.
“Last fall was a real low point, where we went in the space of a week from saying, ‘Assad must go,’ to ‘Assad must stay,’ in order to fulfill the agreement sponsored by [Russian President Vladimir] Putin to get rid of the chemical weapons that Assad had used against his own people,” Gates said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” in 2014.
Secretary of State John Kerry told a painful truth on Sunday, admitting that President Obama’s “red line” fiasco in Syria “cost us significantly” by leading other nations to see America as weak.
Obama drew the line in August 2012 — as a way to avoid getting involved in Syria’s civil war without having to actually justify that restraint. He did so by saying he would intervene if the government did the truly awful, by using chemical weapons.
“We have been very clear to the Assad regime . . . that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized,” he said, also calling “chem” use a “game-changer.”
It was universally seen as a threat of massive consequences for Bashar al-Assad if he crossed the line. But when Assad did launch chemical attacks a year later, Obama stalled.
First he tried to get allies on board with a campaign of airstrikes. Britain declined, but France said yes — yet Obama then asked Congress to OK the bombing. Congress signaled reluctance to “buy in” — and then Obama accepted a diplomatic lifeline from Moscow to negotiate a deal for Syria to (supposedly) turn over all its chem munitions.
The president had blinked at making good on his own threat. Around the globe, US allies and enemies were on notice that America might not live up to its word.
It’s no coincidence that Russia took control of Crimea within the year, and later intervened decisively in Syria to save Assad. Nor that Iran was able to virtually dictate the terms of its nuclear deal with Team Obama.
Kerry on Sunday fell back on two excuses. First he argued that it was a “misperception” that Washington had been weak, since Assad did give up (many of ) his chems. But even he had to admit that “it doesn’t matter. It cost. Perception can often just be the reality.”
He also faulted Congress for not immediately OK’ing the use of force once the president asked — without noting that Obama, in the year after he drew the red line, never laid a bit of groundwork with Congress (or with America’s allies) for enforcing it.
If you issue a threat, then don’t even prepare to make good on it, all you’ve really made is . . . an empty bluff.