Reports that the U.S. navy is making its way to Syria have surfaced, just one day after President Obama insisted that his administration was in no hurry to put America into an expensive and deadly war with Damascus.
According to the Associated Press, President Obama is thinking about whether to send over military forces, in response to the alleged use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime-a move that he claimed would be a 'red line' for the United States.
"We have to think through strategically what's going to be in our long-term national interests," he said during a recent interview on his red line comments. "If the U.S. goes in and attacks another country without a U.N. mandate and without clear evidence that can be presented, then there are questions in terms of whether international law supports it."
But now, President Obama must squash any trepidation he may have experienced on the question of invasion, for the White House has announced that the POTUS will meet Saturday with national security officials to decide the next move on Syria.
Chuck Hagel, Defense Secretary, told AP that the U.S. is working with the international community to figure out what precisely happened in Damascus last week.
Reports indicate that Assad's forces set off chemical weaponry in a suburb of the country's capital.
France, Britain and Turkey have all reported to United States governmental authorities that Assad's forces, without a doubt, engaged in missile strikes that, according to rebel forces, took the lives of between 500 and more than 1,000 people.
But President Obama has stood by the fact that intervening in Damascus would be complicated, and might create issues for America.
"Do we have the coalition to make it work?" President Obama said on Friday. "Those are considerations that we have to take into account."
He also stated that the sectarian conflict in Syria could not be handled or remedied by American military intervention.
A spokesperson from the White House told Reuters that President Obama is firmly against putting "boots on the ground" in Syria.
In the past, the United States has had an ambivalent relationship with Syria, professor of history at UC Irvine and Middle East specialist Mark LeVine told HNGN.
"On the one hand," he said, "Syria received most of their weapons and support from the Soviet Union-they were the main adversary of our main guy, Israel, so they were not 'on our side,' so to speak. On the other hand, they were a reliable course for stability; they had their sphere of influence but they weren't ever trying to go beyond that."
Levine also explained that President Bashar al-Assad is chained to the Ba'ath party on multiple levels-politically, religiously and by family ties. These aspects of the Syrian political infrastructure will make it difficult for the United States to really make any changes, he stated.
But for John McCain, a staunch supporter of military intervention in Syria, the answer to the Middle Eastern country's issues is clear.
"All of the terrible consequences those against intervening predicted would happen in Syria if we intervened, happened because we did not," he said in a TIME article earlier this year. "The longer we wait, the worse the situation gets, and the tougher it will be to confront."
