Obama: ‘I Didn’t Set A Red Line’ On Syria…The World Set A Red Line’

The words were his, however, when he said it.

“A red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized,” Obama said in August 2012. “That would change my calculus.”

Now, critics on the right say, he must respond to what U.S. officials call a major chemical weapons attack by the Syrian regime that killed hundreds in suburban Damascus or lose credibility.

The administration and top congressional leaders pushed back against that criticism Tuesday during debate on Capitol Hill. Even House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, the chamber’s No. 2 Republican, said any president would have drawn that red line based on international norms.

Obama made that same argument Wednesday, saying: “I didn’t set a red line. The world set a red line.”

“The world set a red line when governments representing 98 percent of the world’s population said the use of chemical weapons are abhorrent and passed a treaty forbidding their use, even when countries are engaged in war,” he said at a joint news conference with Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt on the first day of a four-day trip that includes the G-20 summit in Russia.

“Congress set a red line when it ratified that treaty,” Obama continued. “Congress set a red line when it indicated that in a piece of legislation entitled the “Syria Accountability Act” that some of the horrendous things that are happening on the ground there need to be answered for.

By: Cheston Catalano

Cheston Catalano is a Kentucky-based journalist whose work has been featured in the Chattanooga Times Free Press and the Clarksville Leaf Chronicle. He is a long-time contributor to Liberaland.