Following President Barack Obama’s Tuesday night address to the nation, Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer reacted by calling the president’s effort to get support for his Syria strategy “one of the most odd presidential speeches ever delivered.”
Krauthammer decried Obama’s message for giving Russian President Vladimir Putin’s proposal so much weight.
“That’s what makes this one of the most odd presidential speeches ever delivered,” Krauthammer said. “Here is a president who urgently addresses the nation on all channels to call for a pause in assuming that the nation does not want to do in the first place. This is, you know, almost unbelievable. And the fact that he puts so much weight on the Russian proposal, which is a farce.”
“The Russians have said what they’re trying to do is to get a guarantee that America will never strike Syria, meaning Russia wants the installation and the maintenance of the Assad regime, which Obama said had to go, to be a principal of any settlement, which will undo any attempt on the part of the West to ultimately dislodge the man who unleashed the weapons,” he continued.
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Krauthammer went on to say that Obama perhaps made this gesture to buy time as the plan to use force against Syria looks to be dead on arrival in the U.S. Congress.
“So, I don’t see that there is a serious proposal,” Krauthammer added. “I think Obama sees this as a way to negotiate, to pause, to draw it out. And after a couple of weeks, inspections, negotiation, as if there will not be a vote in Congress, there will not be a strike and we will not have the removal of weapons out of Syria.”