In defense of his administration’s decision not to use military force in Syria as the civil war heated up last year, President Barack Obama on Friday said the United States has its limits.
“It is, I think, a false notion that somehow we were in a position to, through a few selective strikes, prevent the kind of hardship we’ve seen in Syria,” Obama told the media.
“It’s not that it’s not worth it,” he added. “It’s that after a decade of war, the United States has limits.”
Obama also stated his belief that the US military would not have been able to have much impact without committing itself long-term.
“Our troops who have been on these rotations and their families and the costs, and the capacity to actually shape in a sustained way an outcome that was viable without us having a further commitment of perhaps another decade, those are things that the United States would have a hard time executing,” And it’s not clear whether the outcome, in fact, would have turned out significantly better.”he said.
