Did you hear Obama say tonight that we would be taking out Assad? I believe I did.

[grahamhgreen]

"In the fight against ISIL, we cannot rely on an Assad regime that terrorizes its people; a regime that will never regain the legitimacy it has lost. Instead, we must strengthen the opposition as the best counterweight to extremists like ISIL, while pursuing the political solution necessary to solve Syria’s crisis once and for all." - Obama

[ChisolmTrailDem]

1. Oh, wow. That doesn't look good in writing, does it? Hmmmm...

Wasn't Syria included on somebody's fantasy list....hmmmm, that must be laying around here somewhere, maybe in that filing cabinet over by the water cooler. BRB.

[ucrdem]

2. Here's the full paragraph:

Across the border, in Syria, we have ramped up our military assistance to the Syrian opposition. Tonight, I again call on Congress to give us additional authorities and resources to train and equip these fighters. In the fight against ISIL, we cannot rely on an Assad regime that terrorizes its people; a regime that will never regain the legitimacy it has lost. Instead, we must strengthen the opposition as the best counterweight to extremists like ISIL, while pursuing the political solution necessary to solve Syria's crisis once and for all.

It's not exactly a palm branch but on the other hand if he really means "political solution" and I believe he does then Assad is going to stay in the picture because he's still running the country and still hugely popular. That's my take-away anyway.

[grahamhgreen]

6. "a regime that will never regain the legitimacy it has lost", how can you predict that if

you are looking for a political solution. If he wins a vote, then he is legitimate, correct?

[ucrdem]

8. Correct. And he's been winning the vote.

If anything he's gained legitimacy by defeating the bad guys repeatedly. How many times has NPR announced that Aleppo has "fallen" to Assad forces? I've lost track but it happens regularly.

[jaysunb]

3. It jumped out at me. n/t

[frazzled]

4. No, you did not

He said we would not be allying with Assad to fight ISIL (but rather will ally with the moderate opposition to Assad).


(What he did not say, but is true, is that this is because Assad is a murdering dictator whose devastation of his country (200,000 dead and several million refugees over the past year and a half) is largely the reason ISIL was able to rush into Syria in the chaos and recruit and gain territory; and he has benefitted from the ISIL terror.)

Before tonight, commentators from the region's greatest fear is that the US would somehow ally with Assad in this fight; we will not.

[Cha]

9. The OP doesn't give a shit whether he said it or not.. last night he had a speech of bush's

posted trying to pass it off as President Obama's because like Chucky Todd he doesn't give a shit what the President as to say.. made up his own damn mind.

Linda Kyambadde @globalcitizenln
Follow
#ObamaSpeech : ICYMI, Assad will not be a US partner in the fight with ISIS because of the atrocities he has committed against his people

3:28 PM - 10 Sep 2014 13 Retweets 4 favorites

Thank you for that, frazzled.

[frazzled]

10. The amount of stupidity/deceit/hyperbole, etc. ...

on this board tonight is incredibly disheartening.

Some of it feels like people who are simply misinformed and not up to speed on the details in that part of the world, and don't care to be; while others just want to make asinine analogies to other conflicts that don't match up at all; still others seem to be just looking for trouble, and are too stupid to realize that the sentences they take out of context don't mean what they think. It's both embarrassing and sad.

[MohRokTah]

12. And some of it feels like nothing more than shit stirring.

Which, of course, a good portion of it is.

[Cha]

14. I think it's par for their course.. They made up their minds before the President even spoke and

facts be damned.. they will not pass up a good whine. If they had been smart they would have waited to hear what the President had to say and based their objections on the facts.. not what they think they heard.

They're embarrassing themselves.. and nothing new.

[grahamhgreen]

19. Hey, it's your war now. When does it end, and who pays? What is

your prediction for the future of this war?

[Cali_Democrat]

15. WOW

Really? Thankfully I missed that post.

Why are people being so dishonest when it comes to Obama and what he says?

It's really pathetic.

[Cha]

16. Needless to say it pissed me off, Cali.. they're disingenuous

because they know they can get away with it from a certain element.

[morningfog]

5. Kerry said he had to go.

This is about regime change. We are aligning with one side of a civil war with Assad on the other. One strike from Assad against our "asserts" or "interests" in Syria and he's in the cross fire as Obama has defined it.

[grahamhgreen]

7. Which, of course, is ineveitable in the fog of war.

[MohRokTah]

11. ODS is rampant on DU. eom

[OnyxCollie]

13. Get ready to cross another one off the PNAC wish list.

[ucrdem]

17. Bottom line: you heard it, but he didn't actually say it.

I'm kind of glad you brought this up grahamhgreen because it reinforces my strong impression of the speech which is that it SOUNDED very bellicose and PNAC- friendly but when you look at it carefully -- and I have no doubt that it was carefully written to produce just this effect -- very little is actually being announced. No real change of policy, just a lot of saber-rattling meant to satisfy the local war-mongers until the next distraction, much like last spring's Syrian war that didn't happen, and last summer's.

[Oilwellian]

18. What Juan Cole says about the opposition

At the same time, Obama appears to envisage arming and training the “moderates” of the Free Syrian Army, who have consistently been pushed to the margins by al-Qaeda offshoots and affiliates. Private billionaires in the Gulf will continue to support ISIL or its rival, Jabhat al-Nusra (the Succor Front, which has pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda). Strengthening yet another guerrilla group will, again, likely prolong the fighting. Moreover, in the past two years, Free Syrian Army moderate groups have gone radical and joined Nusrah or ISIL at an alarming rate. Defectors or defeated groups from the FSA will take their skills and arms with them into the al-Qaeda offshoots.

http://www.juancole.com/2014/09/obama-fight-against.html

[Laelth]

20. I doubt his sincerity on that.

At best, that's posturing against Russia (as Assad is a Russian ally). We don't really need Syria any longer. It's true that we need to contain IS, as I explain HERE, but I seriously doubt that we're deeply invested in toppling Assad. In fact, from a human rights perspective, keeping Assad in power is probably the best outcome we can manage at the moment.

-Laelth