John Kerry Makes the Syria Case to the Liberal Public

Secretary of State John Kerry brought the case for Syrian intervention to the left on Thursday night during an interview with Chris Hayes on MSNBC.

As the Obama administration continues to lobby legislators on their upcoming vote to authorize a military strike on Syria, the administration's been waging a companion campaign to win over a skeptical public on the prospect of using lethal force on Syria in the context of their years-long conflict. Kerry's case, for one thing, argues that military intervention wouldn't be the same as the U.S. going to war.

Kerry said: 

Now, most importantly, Chris, we’re not remotely talking about getting America involved directly in between any of those forces.  The president is not talking about, uh, assuming responsibility for Syria’s civil war.  What the president is trying to do and what we believe is important to America’s national security interests and to humanitarian interests and to the interests of Israel and Jordan and Lebanon and all of our friends in the region is that you hold Bashar Al-Assad responsible for use of chemical weapons and that you degrade his ability to use them again and deter him from using them again.  That’s what’s really important here.  That’s all that we’re talking about in this.

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