House Leaders Express Their Support for Syria Strike
Christopher Gregory/The New York Times
President
Obama, flanked by Speaker John A. Boehner and Representative Nancy
Pelosi, met with Congressional leaders at the White House on Tuesday.
By MARK LANDLER, MICHAEL R. GORDON and THOM SHANKER
Published: September 3, 2013
WASHINGTON
— President Obama won the support on Tuesday of Republican and
Democratic leaders in the House for an attack on Syria, giving him a
foundation to win broader approval for military action from a Congress
that still harbors deep reservations.
Tracking the Syrian Crisis
The Times is providing updates, analysis and public reaction from around the world.
- Rumsfeld Theme: Obama Is Lacking
- Syria Accused of Using Cluster Bombs
- Senate Panel Approves Resolution on Military ActionSpeaker John A. Boehner outside the White House after a meeting on Syria with President Obama on Tuesday.
On Tuesday evening, Democrats and Republicans on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee agreed on the wording of a resolution that would give Mr. Obama the authority to carry out a strike against Syria, for a period of 60 days, with one 30-day extension. A committee vote on the measure could come as early as Wednesday.
Uncertainties abound, particularly in the House, where the imprimatur of the Republican leadership does not guarantee approval by rebellious rank and file, and where vocal factions in both parties are opposed to anything that could entangle the nation in another messy conflict in the Middle East.
Still, the expressions of support from top Republicans who rarely agree with Mr. Obama on anything suggest the White House may be on firmer footing than seemed the case on Saturday, when the president abruptly halted his plans for action in the face of growing protests from Congress.
Mr. Obama is now headed to Sweden and Russia, where he will try to shore up an international coalition to punish Syria for a chemical weapons attack and will probably encounter some of the same debates that are cleaving the Capitol.
Before his departure, the White House intensified what has become the most extraordinary lobbying campaign of Mr. Obama’s presidency as it deployed members of his war council and enlisted political alumni of his 2008 campaign to press the argument with the public.
“This is not the time for armchair isolationism,” said Secretary of State John Kerry, who answered sharp questions and defended the administration’s strategy for Syria in nearly four hours of sometimes sharp exchanges before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Mr. Kerry stirred some confusion about the potential scope of American military involvement when he tried to carve out an exception to a proposed Congressional prohibition on the use of ground troops in Syria — something Mr. Obama and other officials have long ruled out as a general principle.
If Syria were to fall into complete chaos and if the chemical weapons of President Bashar al-Assad’s government there were at risk of falling into the hands of a militant group like Al Nusra, Mr. Kerry said, “I don’t want to take off the table an option that might or might not be available to a president of the United States to secure our country.”
Later, under questioning by Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, the ranking Republican, Mr. Kerry walked back his comment, insisting that he had only been speaking about a hypothetical case. “Let’s shut that door now as tight as we can,” Mr. Kerry said, without quite doing so. “There will not be American boots on the ground with respect to the civil war.”
The Senate resolution — released on Tuesday night by Mr. Corker and the committee’s chairman, Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey — would limit the president’s options and prohibit the use of ground forces. Any strike, it says, should be “tailored” to only deter Syria from using chemical weapons again and to cripple its capacity to do so.
The resolution would prohibit “boots on the ground” and require “the Obama administration to submit their broader plan for Syria,” Mr. Corker said in a statement.
Mr. Menendez added, “We have an obligation to act.”
In one of the most heated moments of the hearing earlier, Senator Rand Paul, the Kentucky Republican, said that Mr. Obama might go through with an attack if Congress failed to authorize it. Mr. Kerry said that he did not know what Mr. Obama would decide but that the president had the authority to do so under the Constitution.
Read More Here
Multimedia
Video: Kerry Calls for Action on Syria
Video: No Ground Troops in Syria, Kerry Insists
Video: Hagel Outlines Goals in Syria
Document: Senate Resolution on Syria
Document: U.S. Assessment of Syrian Use of Chemical Weapons
- theguardian.com, Wednesday 4 September 2013 03.28 EDT
US
secretary of state John Kerry, flanked by joint chiefs chairman General
Martin Dempsey and defence secretary Chuck Hagel, testifies at the
Senate foreign relations committee where he won backing for attacks
against the Syrian regime. Photograph: Corbis
A new draft resolution was agreed by leaders of the Senate foreign relations committee after secretary of state John Kerry pressed a forceful case for striking against the Assad regime. Earlier, Barack Obama secured the backing of the Republican leadership at a key White House meeting.
The president headed for Europe on Tuesday night for what promised to be a testy meeting of the G20 group of industrialised nations. After a short visit to Sweden, Obama will travel to St Petersburg in Russia where the host of the G20, Vladimir Putin, is likely to give the US a rough ride over its plans for air strikes against Syria.
In Washington, key members of Congress swung behind the administration on Tuesday. At the senate foreign relations committee, Kerry and the defence secretary Chuck Hagel were pressed hard to clarify the role of ground forces, but got an otherwise sympathetic reception.
In the evening, details emerged of the committee's revisions to a the White House's proposals for a military authorisation. They set a window limited to 60 days for military action – during which Obama could order the limited, tailored strikes he has foreshadowed – while allowing for a single 30-day extension subject to conditions. Democrat committee chairman Bob Menendez and his Republican counterpart Bob Corker also added a provision banning any use of US armed forces on the ground in Syria.
Committee members are now expected to begin "marking up" the resolution – voting on specific amendments – following a further classified briefing on Wednesday morning. The House of Representatives, where Obama is likely to get a rougher ride, begins its deliberations with a public hearing on Wednesday. Full votes before the Senate and House are expected on Monday.
Sceptical Republicans appeared to have been won over by tougher rhetoric from the White House. For the first time, Obama portrayed his plans for US military action in Syria as part of a broader strategy to topple Bashar al-Assad. While stressing that Washington's primary goal remained "limited and proportional" attacks to degrade Syria's chemical weapons capabilities and deter their future use, the president hinted at a long-term mission that may ultimately bring about a change of regime.
Read More Here
**********************************************
Related articles
No comments:
Post a Comment
Hello and thank you for visiting my blog. Please share your thoughts and leave a comment :)