President Obama made an important speech tonight that took the Assad government up on it's positive response to Russia's encouraging them to give up their chemical weapons, sign the chemical weapons ban treaty, and let the U.N. destroy the chemicals.
The press has played this as Secretary of State John Kerry's offhand suggestion in a speech 2 days ago that the Syrians could get rid of their chemical weapons within a week and that would make the difference. Then the Russians surprised us by supporting it, followed by the Syrians agreeing. Headlines even said, "Kerry's bumbling" may have led to a solution.
That's not the way it happened, as is being reported tonight. Obama and Putin had discussed this over a year ago at the 2012 G-12 meeting. Kerry has followed up with the Russian foreign minister. It was all worked out behind the scenes. And apparently we were letting the Russians take credit for it initially. That Kerry "off hand" remark was very deliberate and calculated.
Tonight President Obama said he was asking Congress to postpone the vote to give this time to work.
We'll see. Can we trust either the Russians or the Syrians? Maybe not. But it's worth a try, while keeping the pressure on of the attack threat.
At least on MSNBC, whose liberal commentators had been mostly opposed to the strikes, all seemed to be in favor of this step -- at least to give it time to see if it works.
Interesting. This could accomplish several things at once. Stop Assad from using chemical weapons again. Act as a deterrent to other nations using them. Provide a detente in Russian-U.S. relations. Take Congress off the hook. Help Obama politically. Save lives.
Ralph
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