Obama will try more diplomacy in Syria but warns: US military ‘doesn’t do pinpricks’

NBC NEWS - President Barack Obama told the country Tuesday night that Syria’s use of chemical weapons presented a danger to American security and violated the world’s 'sense of common humanity'...

Adam Howard

Sep 10, 2013

President Barack Obama told the country Tuesday night that Syria’s use of chemical weapons presented a danger to American security and violated the world’s “sense of common humanity.”

Failure to respond to the regime of Syrian leader Bashar Assad would embolden other tyrants and also endanger American allies, including Turkey, Jordan and Israel, he said from the East Room of the White House.

Transcript: President Obama’s remarks on Syria

He pledged no American boots on the ground, but warned: “The United States military doesn’t do pinpricks. Even a limited strike will send a message to Assad that no other nation can deliver.”

Public opinion polls have also showed consistent opposition to American military involvement in Syria. In a poll released Tuesday by NBC News and The Wall Street Journal, 58 percent of respondents said their member of Congress should vote against authorizing force, compared with 33 percent in favor.

And only 44 percent said they favored military action against Syria, even if it were limited to cruise missiles launched from Navy ships — a decline of six percentage points from a poll released late last month.

The administration has been arguing to Congress, the American public and the world that the United States should lead an attack to punish the Syrian government for using chemical weapons against rebels and civilians on Aug. 21 in its civil war.

But on Monday morning, the outlines of the crisis began to change by the hour.

Secretary of State John Kerry said, almost offhandedly and in response to a reporter’s question, that Syria could avert an American strike by putting his chemical weapons under international control.

But Kerry hastened to say that Assad “isn’t about to do it, and it can’t be done, obviously,” and a spokeswoman added later that the secretary was speaking rhetorically.

Within hours, the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, had presented just such a plan to Syria, a Russian ally, as a way to end the crisis, and Syria suggested that it welcomed the idea.

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