The Red Line and the Rat Line
Seymour M. Hersh on Obama, Erdoğan and the Syrian rebels
In 2011 Barack Obama led an allied
military intervention in Libya without consulting the US Congress. Last
August, after the sarin attack on the Damascus suburb of Ghouta, he was
ready to launch an allied air strike, this time to punish the Syrian
government for allegedly crossing the ‘red line’ he had set in 2012 on
the use of chemical weapons.＊
Then with less than two days to go before the planned strike, he
announced that he would seek congressional approval for the
intervention. The strike was postponed as Congress prepared for
hearings, and subsequently cancelled when Obama accepted Assad’s offer
to relinquish his chemical arsenal in a deal brokered by Russia. Why did
Obama delay and then relent on Syria when he was not shy about rushing
into Libya? The answer lies in a clash between those in the
administration who were committed to enforcing the red line, and
military leaders who thought that going to war was both unjustified and
potentially disastrous.
