The conflict in Syria has been raging for years with no end in sight. The stories from the frontline are horrific. Hundreds of thousands have been killed, millions have fled their homes as refugees, and the terrorist group ISIS maintains its stronghold in Syria while continuing to expand its operation around the world. President Bashir al-Assad has remained in power with the help of Vladimir Putin and the Russian military.
Assad was supposed to have left a long time ago. Today marks five years since President Obama declared: “For the sake of the Syrian people, the time has come for President Assad to step aside.” (He hasn’t.)
One year after Obama called on Assad to step down, the president issued his infamous “red line” ultimatum. During a press conference, Obama explained his decision not to intervene militarily in Syria, but added that if the Assad regime were to start deploying chemical or biological weapons on the frontlines of the conflict, it would be a “red line” for his administration.
“We have communicated in no uncertain terms with every player in the region that that’s a red line for us and that there would be enormous consequences if we start seeing movement on the chemical weapons front or the use of chemical weapons,” the president said. “That would change my calculations significantly.”
One year after this “red line” declaration, more than 1,400 people were killed, including more than 400 children, when Assad’s forces fired chemical weapons at civilians on the outskirts of Damascus. The line was crossed, but Obama didn’t act. Then-Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel said he drew up plans for military strikes in response, but the president told him to stand down. In fact, Obama denied ever drawing a “red line” on chemical weapons use in the first place.
“First of all, I didn’t set a red line,” he said several days after the chemical attack in Syria. “The world set a red line.”
If media networks had been live fact-checking the president they way they do for Donald Trump, they might have noted that, actually, he did set a red line. In any event, neither the United States nor “the world” decided to act in Syria until September 2015, when Russia deployed military forces to Syria in support of President Assad.
Russian forces remain there to this day, and the chemical weapons attacks have continued as well. Assad’s forces have dropped barrel bombs filled with chlorine on civilians, for example, but President Obama downplayed such attacks because chlorine was not “historically listed as a chemical weapon.”