Sometimes difficult to have allies in the sense of planning . They are extremely difficult sometimes. Going back to world war ii, the only thing worse than fighting a war with allies is fighting one without one. It has been sobering to see how few of our allies are stepping forward to help the United States think through what is next. The british have opted out of striking. But president obama is taking the same approach that theyve it cameron did, and he is going to his legislature, going to the congress of the United States to get support. When David Cameron did that, it failed. He said i would not strike as a result of that. The president will spend a lot of time over the next 10 days to get the support. He is reaching out to the American People to make sure he has the support of the American People before he does this. Host tony, democrat, good morning. Taking myank you for call. The first thing i have to say is they say the meaning of insanity is when you keep doing the same thing over and over and over and expecting different results. E have heard this before we saw this movie before. Close your eyes and think back to how we got into war before. It is the same thing. You make it so drastic, so dire. Yet, there are the people who want to go to war. That is not what we elected president obama for. E has to find another way we voted him in two thing. He has to think of another way other than taking us into war. Once you stick your nose in, you are in. Your last speaker said the other countries do not want to get involved. Why cant we have the might to say this is not our fight . Why cant we stick our nose out of it for once . Host i think we got the point. Guest this is where the president stakes his credibility on responding to a serious syrian chemical attack. He put a red line out that said the United States would react if it were to occur. Now it has occurred. That makes this more complicated than some of the other decisions to go to war. A very different set of circumstances in 2003. That will be the tough issue the congress has to wrestle with. Host have we been able to define who our friends and who our enemies are within syria at this point . Some of the rebel fighters . Guest in a traditional campaign, we would have an advocate on one side who supported our interests and had a reasonable amount of consistency with our Democratic Values that we had some belief in. It would be a regime that we would have an association with and would be democratically inclined. The Syrian Rebels are a mishmash of different groups. That have the callers that pointed out the executions that some of the rebels have done that have been on the front page of american newspapers. Also the Syrian Opposition. This would be the group we would be supporting to help topple assad. There is a sworn and group that supports the head of al qaeda and his objectives. We are in a difficult position. The regime has done terrible things but the opposition is doing some terrible things, as well. Host john from los angeles. Caller hello. I have a couple of points to make. In the art of war, there is one disaster is a long conflict. To be in such a long conflict in the past 10 years, that has been detrimental to our military capabilities. Today there was a Christian Village that was bombed and attacked by the strongest al qaeda force, the opposition to assad. What the facts show, al qaeda is the strongest force. Any help that we would give would be going to them. Why would we help terrorists . We need to stay out of it. Guest it circles back to the question we just spoke about. The opposition groups we would be supporting are not groups we have a lot of confidence in in terms of their human rights values. Some of the strongest groups are the most extreme. At least one of those is an al qaeda affiliate. We have a choice between several bad options in supporting those elements. Host we have a tweet about breaking news. I do not know the source of the story. Indication on impending war . Guest we will see. The u. S. Has significant diplomatic presence in lebanon. This may be a oneoff. I would look for a trend before i jump to any conclusions. Host this is an email from lori in indianapolis. Guest a huge number of issues attacking the president of another country. The United States is bound by International Law to not do such things. We are going to have to look at that carefully. To find assad would be difficult enough. A strike that was intended to assassinate or remove the head of another state that we are not at war with would be a difficult threshold for the United States to cross. Host ronald, arlington, virginia. You are on washington journal. Caller good morning. I feel when you first started talking about the pros and cons, i believe you glossed over the cons a little bit. You did have an opportunity to talk about it. I want to ask a couple of pointed questions. What would the second, third order of sex be . Would you accept the risk to punish this regime . What is the consequences . If we didnt know chemical weapons were being moved in large quantities, how would we know they wouldnt be overrun by a terrorist organization . What about hezbollah and sabotage . We cannot be worried that syria is going to attack us. What is the second or third order of facts . That is the most important thing. Guest great question. The Downside Risk of this attack are very significant. That is one reason why were having this great debate. The president put this to the congress for a vote. You could easily see this begin to expand into a wider regional war. We could see american interests attacked in iraq. We could see hezbollah begin to attack american or israeli interests in other parts of the region. We could see a greater refugee flows go into the neighbors as a result of conditions worsening. We could also see the United States would be prompted to do another strike, yet another strike to escalate the american presence to try to have some results that are favorable to the United States. That will make this an important debate for americans in this country. Host are there comparisons to iraq, to kosovo, to libya . Guest i am reluctant to draw too many comparisons. There are parts of wars that resemble each other. There are some significant differences. I am worried that success we have with the Libya Campaign a couple of years ago which involved us using air power. The rebel forces helped to overrun the regime. I think that has put a flavor in this debate that is probably excessively optimistic in terms of what could happen to syria. Syria has a tougher military than libya. I do not think the same kind of quick results to be achieved. Host john from new jersey sent in this email. Guest i did not serve in iraq. I have many friends that did. Iraq is still in the midst of some internal bloodshed. It is probably best for the United States if we do not have 10,000 american troops in the middle of that. The u. S. Continues to advance its interests through its embassy in baghdad. They have now fallen back into greater bloodshed, which i think is tragic for them. Host just to follow up on that, we have this tweet. Guest i think that is a great question. There are indications that it will. It will not look like the jeffersonian democracy we have in this country. I think there is a better than even chance that that is going to survive. Host next call comes from jesse in new york, democrat. We are listening. Caller hello. Here is my question. Are they worried that maybe the strike in syria might cause russia to want to now react . What if they find this as disrespectful . They are telling us they do not want us to attack or to do anything. Why dont we stay out of it . If him and obama are so eager to fight this war, why dont they fight themselves . Host we got the point. Thank you. Guest all the military targets around the country and the middle east are laying out there mean points of impact and putting their target crosshairs on the military targets in syria. This is moving forward to be a bigger battle that we thought it was even two or three weeks ago. How do we respond . This is a fight for the survival of the assad regime. He will pull out all of the stops in order to stay in power. Russia will be a part of that. I know the president is speaking with president putin right now. I think they will continue to support syria. Host we have an email from frank. Guest that is a great military question. We have the ability to launch standoff missiles from well offshore by our aircraft that will fly into Syrian Strike targets. They have hundreds of miles in a range. We never have to go over syrian airspace to launch those missiles. If a campaign gets big enough, you have to do a longer term campaign, you have to have aircraft over the targets. Host gene on the republican line. Caller good morning. I want to thank general barno for his years of service and thanks to cspan. I have a couple of questions. Can you tell the audience the size of the capability of the russian and the chinese fleets that may be in the area or where the destroyers are . That is one question. Ill always see two rows of ribbons on his chest. It doesnt look like he has set a lot of military experience, battle experience. What do you know about him and is he qualified to have that post . Thank you. Host are you retired military . Caller i am exmilitary. Guest great questions. I know general dempsey very well. He only wears two rows of ribbons by choice. He has had several tours in iraq, fighting on the ground as an army general officer. You see all the other generals wearing five or six or seven he has allbbons. Close. He chooses to only wear two of them. He is sending a signal about appearances and about his young soldiers who dont have 10. Rows of ribbons he has as much experience and more than many. The chinese do not have any fleet capability in the mediterranean. They have a limited number of assets in the arabian sea. They are very modest and single ship operations. The russians are moving some ships into the mediterranean. Their presence when not be as substantial as the u. S. Presence. They are interested and are starting to play a role. More towards intimidation than capabilities. Host back to this map. This is probably available on the usa today website. Iran has Cruise Missiles. If those happen to be fired at one of our ships, are our ships defensible . Guest absolutely. 20 years back, we had a Navy Destroyer that was attacked i and iraqi aircraft and nearly sunk. The navy has tightened up their procedures ever since. All of our ships are prepared to defend themselves at any time. I do not think the iranians would do that. That would be a direct attack on the United States. All of the aircraft are ready to fight and prepared to defend themselves. Host zach from tennessee. Taking you live to the center for American Progress in washington. Ambassador Samantha Power will be be speaking momentarily on syria, in particular the reported use of chemical weapons in that country on syrian civilians and the need for International Response. Live coverage here on cspan. Good afternoon. I am deep president of the center for American Progress i am the president of the center for American Progress. I am happy to welcome Samantha Powers. On august 31, International Press reporters said Syrian Military forces lawyer to president assad launched an attack on multiple neighborhoods n nervescus with sari agent, killing about 1300 syrian civilians, including over 400 children. They died in a horrific fashion, convulsions, vomiting, foaming at the mouth, and other characters of nerve agents that ultimately led to death by a sexy asian. The use of this appalling weapon against civilians is a crime against humanity. There is also a blatant violation of International Norms and laws against the use of chemical weapons. International agreements like the protocol of 1925. It is a violation met me many members of the g20 acknowledged a. The president and congress are engaged in an important debate concerning how the United States should respond to the use of chemical weapons. Appropriately, the American People are also making sure that their voices are heard and concerns assessed. While Congress Debates the use of military force and many people of good will worry about this, the bottom line is that the use of chemical weapons on anyone, let alone on children and on ones own civilian population, is an affront to humanity that cannot be ignored. If chemical weapons become normalized, anyone in the world, particularly in the middle east, that would be destabilizing to regional and global security, including our own. I know that Many Americans, including many of my progressive friends, are wary of longterm military engagement. That is completely understandable. Indeed, the iraq war and its catastrophes are haunting us, but as someone who opposed that war from the beginning, let me say that it would be tragic if and mindlessess war, colored our view of syria where there actually are chemical weapons that are being used by a dictator to kill his people. And america is now planning a Ground Invasion or a longterm war. There is no one to better understand the difference between a just and unjust application of force than Samantha Powers. At the United Nations, she is on the frontlines of american diplomacy and democracy at this critical and dangerous time, leading the charge to to have the human live up to the purposes for which it was created. She knows fully the cost of allowing mass atrocities to occur with impunity, having americas response to genocide in the late 20th century. She served under president obama as senior head of Multilateral Affairs and human rights. Please join me in welcoming ambassador Samantha Power. [applause] good afternoon. I am very glad to be back in washington this afternoon and among so many friends here at the center for American Progress. As you know, my topic today is ofious which presents one the critical foreignpolicy challenges we face. Syria is important because it lies at the heart of a region could tickle to u. S. Security, a region that is home to friends and partners and one of our closest allies. It is important because the Syrian Regime has chemical weapons that they have recently used on a large scale and that we cannot allow to fall into s hands. T the Syrian Regime is collaborating with iran and works in lockstep with thousands of extremist fighters from has blood. Syria is important to cousins people, in seeking freedom and dignity, has suffered unimaginable horror these past two and a half years. I also recognize how ambivalent americans are about the situation there. On the one hand, we americans share a desire, after two wars which have taken 6700 american lives and cost over 1 trillion, to invest taxpayer dollars in american schools and infrastructure. On the other hand, and americans have heard thes commitment that this will not the you rock, this will not be afghanistan any use of force will be limited and tailored narrowly to the chemical weapons threat. On the one hand, we share we are against these brutal tactics by president assad. And we are worried about the violent extremists who have carried out atrocities. On the one hand, we share the deep conviction that chemical weapons are barbaric, that we should never again see children killed in their beds, lost to a world that they never had the chance to try to change. Yet, on the other hand, some are wondering why, given the flagrant violation of an International Norm, it is incumbent on the United States to lead since we cannot and should not be [inaudible] notwithstanding these complexities and the various concerns that we all share, i am here to explain why the cost of not taking targeted, limited military action are far greater than the risks of Going Forward in the manner the president obama has outlined. Every decision to use military force is an excretion a is an excruciatingly difficult one, especially difficult when filtered to the prism of the past decade. But let me take a minute to discuss the unique remonstrance monstrous crime that has brought us to this crossroads. What comes to mind to me is one father saying goodbye to his two young daughters. His girls had not yet been shrouded. There were still dressed in the pink shorts and leggings of little girls. The father lifted their lifeless bodies, cradled them, and cried out wake up, what would i do without you . How do i stand this pain . As a parent, i cannot begin to answer his questions. I cannot begin to imagine what it would be like to feel such searing agony. In arguing for a limited military action in the wake of this mass casualty chemical weapons, we are not arguing that syrian lives are worth protecting only when they are threatened with poison gas. Rather, we are reaffirming what the world already made claim in laying down its collective judgment on chemical weapons. There is Something Different about Chemical Warfare that raises the stakes for the United States and raises the stakes for the world. There are man