Posted on September 11, 2013

Graham: Obama Must Act On Syria After Speech, With Or Without Congress

GLORIA BORGER: OK. But you say he's backed himself into a corner. So does he even have to go to Congress?



LINDSEY GRAHAM: You know, there's probably a reason 225 times presidents didn't come to Congress. I don't know if I'd come to talk with us. Quite frankly. The president has mismanaged this from day one about what we're trying to do, the goals we're trying to achieve. I think he made an unbelievably compelling case that we need to act here and compare that to the unbelievably small response we're going to give.



So at the end of the day, if I were the president I would act after this speech if diplomacy fell apart and I wouldn't come back to Congress.



JESSICA YELLIN: Do you think he --



GRAHAM: Because if he does his credibility as a world leader is completely shot. You can't address the world and talk to your enemies and your friends in the tone he did and do nothing.



YELLIN: But was it a mistake not to lay out a timeframe for diplomacy to work?



GRAHAM: Don't worry. The Congress will help him there. If two weeks from now we're still talking about how many -- what the inventory in Syria is like for the chemical weapons, nobody is going to be able to tolerate that.



YELLIN: Really? You don't think he's shown exceptional patience today?



GRAHAM: What I think is the president really is trying to do -- force does matter. I don't think we'd have this conversation without the threat of military force. I really believe the president's right about that when the Foreign Relations Committee passed the resolution. I think Assad and Russia took this a bit differently.