I Agree With Obama

[n david]

First, on a side note, the next year or two should be fun watching Hillary Clinton and obama fight each other. Currently, she's used the ISIS uprising to criticize obama for not arming the Syrian rebels early last year. Remember the Syrian civil war? Remember the British Parliament rejecting the PM's request for authorization to become involved in the conflict? At the same time, there was a majority in Congress (on both sides) who were against the US becoming involved. In fact, the opposition was so far against intervention that obama didn't even officially send the request to Congress.

At the time, I was very much against the US becoming involved in Syria's civil war. The rebels are unreliable, and likely would soon use their power and weapons to turn against us. Not only that, but the chemical weapons used were proven to be most likely detonated by the rebels and not the Syrian government.

I agreed with obama not becoming involved then (though his opposition was likely to prevent being embarrassed by a rejection by Congress), and I still agree now.

Here are some quotes:

According to one of the lawmakers, Sen. Bob Corker asked the president a long question that included sharp criticisms of President Obama’s handling of a number of foreign policy issues—including Syria, ISIS, Russia, and Ukraine. Obama answered Corker at length. Then, the president defended his administration’s actions on Syria, saying that the notion that many have put forth regarding arming the rebels earlier would have led to better outcomes in Syria was “{expletitive deleted}”

I agree

“The president still feels very strongly that we are deluding ourselves if we think American intervention in Syria early on by assisting these rebels would have made a difference,”

Exactly

In a New York Times interview published Aug. 8, Obama said that the idea arming the rebels would have made a difference had “always been a fantasy.”

I agree

“This idea that we could provide some light arms or even more sophisticated arms to what was essentially an opposition made up of former doctors, farmers, pharmacists and so forth, and that they were going to be able to battle not only a well-armed state but also a well-armed state backed by Russia, backed by Iran, a battle-hardened Hezbollah, that was never in the cards,” Obama said.

I don't agree with this statement, specifically with the opinion that an army of doctors, farmers, pharmacists, etc couldn't battle against the Syrian government. America's own history and revolution proves obama wrong.

But I still agree with obama's decision, for whatever reason, to not intervene in Syria.

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