Obama on Syria

In President Obama’s address on the subject of Syria this past Tuesday, he made it abundantly clear that the United States, along with 189 other world governments, does not tolerate the use of chemical warfare. He is well aware of our past military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan and in no way wants this to turn into a full-blown war. His mission by going into Syria is to notify the Assad-regime of just how wrong chemical warfare is. One statement by the president that really struck a chord with me was when he said

“That's my judgment as Commander-in-Chief.  But I’m also the President of the world’s oldest constitutional democracy.  So even though I possess the authority to order military strikes, I believed it was right, in the absence of a direct or imminent threat to our security, to take this debate to Congress.”

In this statement he never says anything along the lines of  “we’re going into Syria right away and handling this with brute force.” The New York Times even made note of this in their paper on Wednesday September 11^th by saying:

“Mr. Obama did not detail the steps that the United States would demand from Syria as proof that the diplomatic efforts were more than a delaying tactic to avoid a punishing strike from cruise missiles and American bombers.”