Obama Not Ruling Out Attacking Syria Without UN

Administration Reiterates Threats After Repeated Defeats

Decisively defeated in poll after poll, losing the war battle in Congress to such an extent there will likely never even be a vote there, and resigned to not having any military language in the UN Security Council resolution, President Obama has no avenues to realistically attack Syria.

That’s not how the administration is selling it, however, as officials continue to insist in briefings that they are not ruling out attacking Syria unilaterally, and in direct defiance of everyone at home and abroad.

President Obama has been threatening to attack Syria for weeks now, and has delivered multiple public addresses pushing the American public to support that. Not only did they not succeed, but there is more opposition to the war now than when he began the push.

The threats at this point ring hollow: it’s unthinkable that President Obama, after bragging about his ability to sell the war to Americans, would after so many failures try to launch the war anyhow.

Rather, it’s an attempt to reframe the threat as conditional on Syria doing things they’ve already agreed to do, part of the new administration narrative that their reckless, and futile, attempt to start a war deserves all the credit for the peace.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.