Syria -- I guess I spoke too soon

Yesterday, I wrote that president Obama had done a good thing in imposing new sanctions on the Syrian regime. At the time, I was relying on news reports rather than on the text of what Obama had actually said. The setting yesterday was the Holocaust Museam in DC. Obama was introduced by Elie Wiesel for a ceremony commemorating the Holocaust. Then Obama spoke. You can read the speech here. In true Obama style, the speech is mostly about Obama. But Obama finally tells the assembled folks that

Last year, in the first-ever presidential directive on this challenge, I made it clear that "preventing mass atrocities and genocide is a core national security interest and a core moral responsibility of the United States of America."


Obama also says

Now we’re doing something more. We’re making sure that the United States government has the structures, the mechanisms to better prevent and respond to mass atrocities. So I created the first-ever White House position dedicated to this task. It’s why I created a new Atrocities Prevention Board, to bring together senior officials from across our government to focus on this critical mission. This is not an afterthought. This is not a sideline in our foreign policy. The board will convene for the first time today, at the White House.

This is truly amazing. Last year Obama announced that stoping atrocities was a core interest of the USA. Since then, 11,000 or more civilians in Syria have been slaughtered by the forces of ruthless dictator Bashir al-Assad. In all that time, Obama did next to nothing, even though stoping atrocities is supposed to be a core interest of the USA. Now, the Atrocities Prevention Board will have its first meeting?

Did the Joint Chiefs of Staff wait for six months to meet after Pearl Harbor? Did the UN do nothing for eight months after the North Koreans invaded South Korea in 1950? Did George H. W. Bush wait around for a year to see how that Iraqi invasion of Kuwair would unfold in 1990 before considering what to do? Did America ignore 9-11 for even weeks? Of course not, all of these events dealt with core interests of the USA. As a result, there was a response from America. But atrocities and genocide in Syria, which violated that core interest of the USA, are only now going to be considered by some new bureaucratic Board in Washington. Is Obama kidding?

Some day Obama will learn that it is not enough just to say something; one has to actually act. That is true both for presidents and countries alike. If stopping atrocities and genocide is actually a core interest of the USA, then Obama has to treat it as such. The usual blather just won't cut it.