Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker, R-Tenn., said Monday that President Obama’s failure to follow up with his threat of attacking Syria for using chemical weapons was the lowest point in U.S. international relations that he’s ever seen.
“I think it’s the lowest point I’ve seen, personally, in foreign policy for the United States,” Corker said on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show.
Obama warned in 2012 that his “red line” with Syria would be its use of chemical weapons against its own people. But after Syrian President Bashar Assad used those weapons, Obama didn’t follow through.
Some reports this year said Obama changed his mind after Iran threatened to stop nuclear negotiations with the United States if the U.S. launched an attack against Syria. The White House has rejected that theory, but regardless, Corker said Monday that his decision ruined U.S. relationships with Saudi Arabia.
“Traveling the region after we did not take those steps, just the betrayal that people felt, Saudi Arabia, I think you know, was ready to go with us,” Corker said. “And this was going to be a ten hour operation, from our standpoint, mostly off of the Mediterranean.”
“They never received a call. They watched the operation be called off by CNN press conference,” he said. “And you know, it just was, it let the air out of the sails of the moderate opposition, which, as you remember at that time, had momentum.”
Corker said Obama’s move “let their spirits down,” and said Obama also never provided the equipment to Syrian rebels that he promised.
“So we let them down at every step, and if you remember, Hugh, our ambassador was cheering the rebels on in the very beginning, and yet we held their coats,” Corker said. “That’s all we did.”
“I would go to the refugee camps and tell them in the beginning that help was on the way,” Corker added. “We’re going to get arms to your brothers, to your uncles, to your sons. But again, never at the levels we said we would, and this was, this is going to be part of his legacy.”
He concluded by saying the incident was “absolutely a low point in U.S. foreign policy.”
