As House begins considering military strike on Syria, Obama claims U.S. credibility is on the line over response

(Image credit: Patrick Feller/Flickr)

On Wednesday, the U.S. House of Representatives began the process of considering a resolution authorizing a military strike on Syria while President Barack Obama claimed that the credibility of the U.S. is on the line.

The White House has been unrelenting in putting pressure on Congress to approve military action in Syria in response to alleged use of chemical weapons.

Secretary of State John Kerry, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel and Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will all appear before the House Foreign Affairs Committee to continue to make their case for a military operation.

Yet when the Senate was considering their draft resolution, one key player, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) was busy playing online poker. I also pointed out that Kerry met with Assad six times in 2009 and spoke well of him at the time.

Kerry continued to present the Obama administration’s claims about the alleged use of chemical weapons.

Kerry claimed “there is a preponderance of evidence that chemical weapons were used, necessitating the need for a U.S. military response,” USA Today reports.

“It did happen, and the Bashar al-Assad regime did it,” Kerry said.

Of course, no such evidence has been presented, even after Russian President Vladimir Putin called on the U.S. to present the evidence to the UN Security Council.

Furthermore, even UN officials have confirmed that there is no way to tell who used chemical weapons.

Yet this has not stopped the Obama administration from constantly pushing for authorization of a military strike.

Speaking in Sweden on Wednesday, Obama claimed that the credibility of the entire United States, its Congress and the international community as a whole is on the line over the response to the alleged use of chemical weapons.

“My credibility is not on the line. The international community’s credibility is on the line,” Obama said, according to the BBC.

“America and Congress’s credibility is on the line, because we give lip-service to the notion that these international norms are important,” Obama said.

Interestingly, Obama said that he believed Congress would approve a military strike on Syria, but said that even if they didn’t, he has the right to act on behalf of U.S. national interests as commander-in-chief.

This seems to indicate that if Congress does not eventually give the green light to a military strike, Obama could move forward regardless.

“As commander-in-chief I always preserve the right and the responsibility to act on behalf of America’s national security,” Obama said, according to The Guardian. “I do not believe that I was required to take this to Congress but I did not take this to Congress just because it’s an empty exercise. I think it is important to have Congress’s support.”

The Guardian reports that this response came when asked directly about the possibility of continuing to attack Syria without the full support of Congress.

Russia continues to oppose any military action, saying that they have “plans” on how to react if the U.S. does indeed attack Syria.

“We have our ideas about what we will do and how we will do it in case the situation develops toward the use of force or otherwise. We have our plans,” Putin said in an interview with the Associated Press and Russia’s state Channel 1 television.

However, Putin said that Russia was not completely opposed to backing a UN resolution authorizing punitive military strikes if it was actually proven that the Syrian government used chemical weapons on its own people.

“From our viewpoint, it seems absolutely absurd that the armed forces — the regular armed forces, which are on the offensive today and in some areas have encircled the so-called rebels and are finishing them off — that in these conditions they would start using forbidden chemical weapons while realizing quite well that it could serve as a pretext for applying sanctions against them, including the use of force,” Putin said.