Photograph by Sebastiano Tomada/Sipa USA via AP Images

FSA fighters clear a room in a newly conquered building along the front line of Sheikh Saeed a highly contested area of Aleppo, Syria, on March 18, 2013.

President Barack Obama is remembering Iraq.

And the world, he says, will remember what the U.S. did about Osama bin Laden and Muammar Qaddafi.

All of this has to do with the “red line” — the use of chemical weapons in Syria which Obama has said the U.S. will not tolerate. And what the world is to make of the time Obama is taking assessing evidence that Syria has crossed it.

At a joint White House news conference with President Park Geun-Hye of Korea today, Obama was asked at what point the costs of doing something are outweighed by the costs of doing nothing.

“I think there’d be severe costs in doing nothing,” Obama replied. “`That’s why we’re not doing nothing.”

The U.S. is providing nonlethal aid to the opposition.

“If what you’re asking is, are there continuing reevaluations about what we do, what actions we take in conjunction with other international partners to optimize the day when, or to hasten the day when we can see a better situation in Syria, we’ve been doing that all along and we’ll continue to do that,” he said.  “Understandably, there’s a desire for easy answers.”

Intercepting a question posed to his Korean counterpart — asked if the U.S. failing to act on perceived violations of the red line in Syria “could embolden” U.S. enemies elsewhere, such as North Korea — Obama said:

“The operative word there, I guess, is… perceived. And what I’ve said is we have evidence that there has been the use of chemical weapons inside of Syria, but I don’t make decisions based on `perceived’… And I can’t organize international coalitions around “perceived.”  We tried that in the past, by the way, and it didn’t work out well. ”

That would be Iraq, where the U.S. went to war over weapons of mass destruction never found.

Yet the world should take notice of what his administration has done when he has declared that a leader must go, as he did in Libya, and as he has done in Syria, and what he did after a decade-long search for Osama bin Laden.

“In the end, whether it’s bin Laden or Qaddafi,” Obama said, “if we say we’re taking a position, I think at this point the international community has a pretty good idea that we act on our commitments.”

Original post is Obama: ‘Not Doing Nothing’ in Syria by Political Capital.

Photograph by Louai Beshara/AFP via Getty Images

A Syrian officer is seen through the wreckage of a vehicle following an explosion in the Mazzeh district of Damascus on April 29, 2013, which is believed to have targeted the prime minister’s convoy.

Opening the second news conference of his second term without an opening statement of his own, President Barack Obama fielded an opening question about Syria.

The U.S. needs credible evidence that stands up here and in the international community, he said, before he can address what “range of options” the U.S. might take in response to the use of chemical weapons in Syria.

“I think it’s important to understand that for several years now what we’ve been seen is a slowly unfolding disaster for the Syrian people,” Obama said. “My policy from the beginning has been that President Assad lost credibility, that he attacked his own people… The only way to bring peace and stability in Syria is for Assad to step down… We have worked to strengthen the opposition…There are a whole host of steps we have taken… We’ve got to make sure we are doing everything we can to protect the Syrian people.”

“What I’ve also said is that the use of chemical weapons would be a game-changer,” the president said. “When you use these types of weapons, you have the potential of killing massive amounts of people in the most inhumane way possible… We don’t want that Genie out of the bottle.”

“What we now have is evidence that chemical weapons were used inside of Syria, but we don’t know how they were used, when they were used and who used them,” he said. “I’ve got to make sure I’ve got the facts… If we end up rushing to judgment without hard independent evidence,” he said, the U.S. could find itself in the position where it can’t mobilize international support. “It’s important for us to do this in a prudent way… to establish with some certainty what has happened in Syria, what is happening in Syria,” he said, and he is seeking “a clear baseline of facts.”

Still, he wouldn’t specify how the game will change.

“By game-changer, I mean that we would have to rethink the range of options that are available to us,” Obama said. “Obviously, there are options available to me that are on the shelf right now that we have not” used. That is “a spectrum of options,” he said.

Original post is Obama: ‘Game-Changer’ Means ‘Range of Options’ in Syria by Political Capital.

Photograph by Joshua Roberts/Bloomberg

President Barack Obama during a meeting with Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, the Amir of Qatar, unseen, in the Oval Office of the White House on April 23, 2013.

One hundred days into his second term as president, today, April 30, President Barack Obama has plenty to talk about at a White House news conference.

Including what hasn’t happened at home — where his fervent pleas for new gun controls following the killing of 20 schoolchildren in Newton, Connecticut, in December have gone unheeded in Congress.

And what hasn’t happened in Syria — where the president warned months ago of a red-line not to be crossed, the use of chemical weapons by a government under siege by rebels, and now the U.S. concludes “with varying degrees” of confidence that a chemical agent, sarin gas, has been deployed.

One thing has happened: The Senate is underway with a debate over immigration, focused on precisely the sort of comprehensive reform that Obama is seeking — a path to citizenship for 11 million undocumented immigrants already in the U.S., an overhaul of visas for the low-skilled and high-skilled alike, and tougher border security going forward.

It may not be the past 100 days so much on people’s minds today, as it is the next 100.

The president will field questions from reporters at the White House at 10:15 am EDT.

Original post is Obama: 100 Days In, Red Line Deadline? by Political Capital.

Photograph by Amos Ben Gershom/GPO via Getty Images

President Barack Obama with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as they walk along the Colonnade of the White House in this March 5, 2012 file photo.

It takes an election to raise a peace flag.

So much was made of the allegedly deteriorated relationship between President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during last year’s U.S. elections — remember Republican Mitt Romney’s tour of the Holy Land with Las Vegas casino magnate Sheldon Adelson — that it was written as a virtual statement of fact in some quarters. But the elections in the U.S. and Israel have left the two leaders standing, and Obama plans his first trip to Israel as president next month.

Even since the elections, Republicans in Washington have tried to keep the embers stirred, challenging Obama’s nominee for secretary of defense, Chuck Hagel, about his one-time referral to the intimidation of the “Jewish lobby” in Washington. Hagel, reframing his remarks to identify the pro-Israel lobby, acknowledged during Senate confirmation hearings that he could cite no instance in which that lobby had convinced any senator to act unwisely.

Now Michael Oren, the Israeli ambassador to the U.S., can be seen on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” downplaying the import of any perceived dispute between Obama and Netanyahu, whom Oren says have held many, “open, honest” meetings. And today, the Israeli embassy in Washington tweeted a lovely emblem of the “unbreakable allegiance” between the nations:

Cool. Check out the official unbreakable alliance logo created for President Obama’s trip to Israel. #UltimateAlly twitter.com/IsraelinUSA/st…

— Embassy of Israel (@IsraelinUSA) February 19, 2013

Whatever the actual state of relations between Obama and Netanyahu may be, it’s difficult to think of a time in recent years in which the alliance between the two nations has been more critical for Israel: Facing rocket attacks from Gaza, a rebellion in Syria that could yield an extremist regime even more worrisome than Assad’s, and, as Oren has put it, a “shrinking” window in the time frame in which outside military intervention could prevent Iran from fulfilling its perceived ambition of producing weapons-grade nuclear material.

“The entire region is in turmoil,” Oren said on Joe’s show today.

It’s a fair bet that the logo which the embassy unfurled on Twitter today will be seen, interspersed with the standards of the two nations, along the main streets of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem when Obama calls on Netanyahu.

Original post is Obama’s Netanyahu Welcome Note: Israeli Flag of ‘Unbreakable Alliance’ by Political Capital.

Photograph by Achilleas Zavallis/AFP via Getty Images

A Syrian pre-Baath flag flies over the Bab al-Salam refugee camp on the Syrian-Turkish border on Jan. 1, 2013.

The U.S. will provide $155 million in additional aid to the Syrian people, President Barack Obama announced in a video today.

American aid, which now totals $365 million over two years, helps provide food, clean water, medical treatment and winter supplies for millions suffering from Syria’s ongoing war, according to a White House statement.

“The relief we send doesn’t say ‘Made in America,’ but make no mistake: Our aid reflects the commitment of the American people,” Obama says in the video.

The new aid will include provisions of flour, wheat, blankets, boots and stoves, as well as “health care for victims of sexual violence,” Obama says in a portion of the video that he directs to Syrians. The video, which last almost three minutes, is available with or without Arabic subtitles.

The announcement came hours after American news outlets reported at least 65 people were found dead along the banks of the Quweiq River in Aleppo. A bipartisan group of U.S. senators including Sen. John McCain called for increased aid for the Syrian opposition coalition on Jan. 22 after a Senate delegation traveled to the Middle East.

Obama rebuffed criticism that the U.S. has retreated from global leadership in an interview that aired Jan. 27 on CBS’s “60 Minutes,” as Bloomberg reported. Obama said he has been careful not to “shoot from the hip” in Syria, but has helped lay the groundwork for regime changes in Libya and Egypt.

Original post is Obama Announces $155 Million in Syria Aid by Political Capital.

Photograph by Scott Eells/Bloomberg

Senator John Kerry, a Democrat from Massachusetts, during day three of the Democratic National Convention.

John Kerry came to the back of the 2004 campaign plane, where some reporters were milling in the aisle.

We were having a mundane conversation about the way we connect our traveling laptop computers with the home office.

The lanky senator from Massachusetts, a candidate for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, asked us somewhat awkwardly what we were talking about. Our answer about our technology seemed equally trivial.

“I don’t even use a BlackBerry,” Kerry explained of his own lack of knowledge about such matters. “When I want to tell someone what to do, I just call them on the phone.”

It sounded, at the time, like an insight into the way a powerful and privileged man does business. He went on, after all, to secure his party’s nomination for president in Boston: “John Kerry, reporting for duty.”

It’s safe to assume that Kerry skipped the Berry and went straight to the iPhone.

It also appears that the career senator, now his home state’s senior statesman, stands to achieve a role that he so ambitiously sought eight years ago: Representing the United States of America around the world.

Should President Barack Obama nominate Kerry, by all private accounts the leading contender for Secretary of State now that UN Ambassador Susan Rice has withdrawn her name, the Senate once again will be sending one of its own to the front lines of American diplomacy. Hillary Clinton, a former senator from New York and first lady, is ready to retire the post.

Kerry, a decorated veteran of the Vietnam War who returned home to protest American involvement there, has a long and storied political career. The Swift Boat that he commanded in the rivers of Southeast Asia became the emblematic name for an assault his political adversaries effectively waged against him in the 2004 campaign. George W. Bush, the wartime president, won re-election.

Should Kerry emerge from the roiled political waters of Rice’s confrontation with Republican senators as Obama’s nominee for the nation’s top diplomat, he will immediately face some healing at home. It’s not lost on anyone that the architect of Rice’s defeat is another senator, John McCain of Arizona, who also sought the presidency — twice. Losing to Obama in 2008, McCain has prevailed in his first contest with a re-elected president in 2012.

Like that “listening tour” that Clinton made during her campaign for Senate, the senior senator from Massachusetts will have to spend as much time hearing out the opposition on Capitol Hill — with Republicans, chiefly McCain, questioning Obama’s resolve in foreign theaters such as Syria — as he will in engaging other world leaders.

Less time calling people and telling them what to do.

Original post is Kerry’s Moment: A Listening Tour by Political Capital.

Photograph by Gianluigi Guercua/AFP via Getty Images

A Libyan woman raises her ink stained finger as she leaves a polling station after voting for Libya's General National Assembly in Tripoli on July 7, 2012.

Written by Flavia Krause-Jackson in New York

Even after a bruising week on Capitol Hill ducking cameras, Susan Rice has kept her voice alive on Twitter.

Today was no exception.

As @ambassadorrice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations branded the world body’s recognition of Palestine as an observer state “unfortunate & counterproductive.” With her trademark bluntness, she typed:

“Progress towards a just & lasting two-state solution cannot be made by pressing a green voting button in NY.’

and: “Long after the votes have been cast & speeches forgotten, it’s the Palestinians & Israelis who must still talk – and listen – to each other. ”
At one time disdainful of Twitter, the aspiring secretary of  state is a convert to the micro-blogging site, where she has more followers than  @VP Joe Biden and three times the number of that other famous Rice, Condoleezza.

The controversy surrounding her infamous Sept. 16 comments about the attack on the U.S. diplomatic outpost in Beghazi, Libya,  has only boosted her popularity, and she now is edging toward the 230,000 mark.

Online — as in real life — she has fans as well as haters.

The 140-character limit on Twitter lends itself to Rice’s own personal style.

“I guess you could say I’m plainspoken,” she  told her Stanford alumni magazine in an interview in January 2000. “I can be diplomatic when I have to be. But I don’t have a lot of patience for B.S.”

Disgusted that Russia and China prevented the #UN Security Council from fulfilling its sole purpose, she typed furiously off her BlackBerry after a double veto on Syria. The so-called referendum yesterday in #Syria was clearly a sham, she wrote about President Bashar al-Assad’s efforts to address the unrest.

She has tweeted around the world. On a surprise visit to Libya, she said: #Libyan #women kick butt. On a trip to Kenya with colleagues from the Security Council, she told the Somali president: “get your act together.”

Still, her missives are not all about work.

At the end of the Jazz Day concert at the UN with Stevie Wonder, she mused:

“The General Assembly Hall has never been so cool and may never be again. #JazzDay”

Some are even intensely personal, such as the message on Jan. 27, when she gave her deceased father, Emmett Rice, a shout-out about a movie night. She tweeted: “My family & I saw #RedTails last weekend. Riveting, action-packed & moving film. Made me even more proud of my late Dad, a Tuskegee Airman.”

Original post is Rice Tweets: Libyan Women Kick… by Political Capital.

Photograph by Jewel Samad/AFP via Getty Images

President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney participate in the third and final presidential debate at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Florida, on Oct. 22, 2012.

President Barack Obama said tonight that the U.S. has done its best to ensure that Syria’s leader is “isolated,” but ultimately, he said, “Syrians are going to have to decide their own future.”

“What we are seeing take place in Syria is heart-breaking… But we also have to realize, for us to get more militarily entangled in Syria is a serious step,” the president said, and arming the opposition with heavy weaponry could have unpredictable results.

“We don’t want to have military involvement there,” Romney said, arguing that the government opposition should have “the arms necessary to defend themselves. ”

Obama said the U.S. went after the former Libyan leader in a steady, “thoughtful way.” And Syria’s leader must be confronted with the same consideration.

“Look, this has been going on for a year — this should have been a time for American leadership,” Romney said.

“What you’ve heard Governor Romney saying is, he doesn’t have different ideas — that’s because we’re doing what we should be doing,” Obama said.

Original post is Obama-Romney: Syria by Political Capital.