Leid Stories - 09/16/13

Obama’s “Red Line” Extra Heavy With Syria, Totally Erased With Israel

The much-anticipated inspectors’ report on the Aug. 21 poison-gas attack in Syria is scheduled to be released today, while the U.N. Security Council begins work on formalizing a Russia-U.S.-brokered plan to search for and destroy Syria’s lethal inventory of chemical weapons.

President Obama vows to take military action if Syria does not comply strictly with the terms of the agreement. President Bashar al-Assad crossed the “red line” by gassing civilians, Obama has charged, and the United States has a “moral obligation” to inflict punishment.

But Obama’s “red line” talk is hypocritically circular, not morally straight. Leid Stories asks: How does the president explain his zeal to punish Syria for the alleged use of chemical weapons but completely ignore the same internationally condemned act by Israel – and the United States itself, for that matter?