President Obama said Wednesday night that he and his national security team are constantly trying to figure out whether there is more the U.S. can be doing to stop the bloodshed in Syria’s civil war and the safe haven it created for the Islamic State.
“There hasn’t been probably a week that has gone by in which I haven’t reexamined” the way in which we are handling Syria and “haven’t gone through other options we have,” Obama told a CNN Townhall.
Even with the constant reassessments, he said he has continued to stand by the belief that changing the dynamic in Syria and helping to end the civil war there would require a large number of ground troops and a sustained commitment of them – a commitment he doesn’t believe is in the U.S. interest.
“There isn’t a scenario absent of us deploying large numbers of troops that we can stop a civil war where both sides are dug in” aside from getting both sides in the room and trying to find a diplomatic solution, he said.
He also addressed critics who said that he could have decided early on in the war to intervene militarily and it would have had a bigger impact than it would now.
First, he said, “We would have violated international law in just going in and invading.”
But he also said the U.S. would have needed to sustain a large U.S. military presence with a “bunch of folks on the ground.” That kind of commitment would have left the U.S. military over-extended because the U.S. was still trying to provide support to the new government in Iraq, as well as try to stabilize the government in Afghanistan.
“We have spent well over a trillion dollars and there is a large cost caring for those who have come home with wounds seen and unseen,” he said.
“In these cases, you have to make judgments about what is in the best interest of the United States – even when what you see is heartbreaking,” he said.
