Obama: U.S. Has ‘Legitimate Need’ To Be Involved In Syria

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President Barack Obama took to defending his recent decision o provide arms to Syrian rebels, saying in an interview that aired Monday that the United States has a “legitimate need” to be involved in the bloody civil war.

Obama dismissed that idea that the U.S. should show greater reluctance before entering Middle Eastern entanglements in the wake of the Iraq War.

“It is very easy to slip slide your way into deeper and deeper commitments because if it’s not working immediately then what ends up happening is six months from now people say, ‘Well, you gave the heavy artillery. Now what we really need is X, and now what we really need is Y,’ because until Assad is defeated in this view it’s never going to be enough, right?” Obama said. “Now, on the other side there are folks who say, you know, ‘We are so scarred from Iraq. We should have learned our lesson. We should not have anything to do with it.’ Well, I reject that view as well because the fact of the matter is, is that we’ve got serious interests there, and not only humanitarian interests, we can’t have the situation of ongoing chaos in a major country that borders a country like Jordan which in turn borders Israel. And we have a legitimate need to be engaged and to be involved.”

Discussion over arming the rebels in Syria has already consumed much of the focus of this week’s G8 Summit, with the likes of Russian President Vladimir Putin firmly opposed to such a move. A poll released Monday from Pew Research Center found little support in the U.S. for arming the rebels.

 

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