Pres. Obama's Speech Against US Involvement In syria....

I love it when speeches made by senators come back to bite them as presidents! I have taken the liberty of making a few very minor changes to this speech:

"Good afternoon. Let me begin by saying that although this has been billed as an anti-war speech, I stand before you as someone who is not opposed to war in all circumstances. The Civil War was one of the bloodiest in history, and yet it was only through the crucible of the sword, the sacrifice of multitudes, that we could begin to perfect this union, and drive the scourge of slavery from our soil. I don't oppose all wars.

My forbears signed up to fight wars in Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Pacific. They saw the dead and dying across the fields of Europe; they heard the stories of fellow troops who first entered Auschwitz and Treblinka. They fought in the name of a larger freedom, part of that arsenal of democracy that triumphed over evil, and they did not fight in vain. I don't oppose all wars.

After Sept. 11, after witnessing the carnage and destruction, the dust and the tears, I supported the administration's pledge to hunt down and root out those who would slaughter innocents in the name of intolerance, and I would willingly take up arms myself to prevent such tragedy from happening again. I don't oppose all wars. And I know that in this crowd today, there is no shortage of patriots, or of patriotism.

What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Hillary Clinton and other armchair, weekend warriors in this administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne.

What I am opposed to is the attempt by political hacks like John Kerry to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty rate, a drop in the median income — to distract us from corporate scandals and a stock market that has just gone through its worst years since the Great Depression. That's what I'm opposed to. A dumb war. A rash war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics. Now let me be clear — I suffer no illusions about Bashar Hafez al-Assad. He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power. He has repeatedly defied UN resolutions, thwarted UN inspection teams, launched armed attacks against his own people. He's a bad guy. The world, and the Syrian people, would be better off without him.

But I also know that Assad poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States or to his neighbors, that the Syrian economy is in shambles, that the Syrian military a fraction of its former strength, and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history. I know that even a successful war against Syria will require a U.S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Syria without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of the Muslim Brotherhood. I am not opposed to all wars. I'm opposed to dumb wars.

So for those of us who seek a more just and secure world for our children, let us send a clear message to the president today. You want a fight, President Obama? Let's finish the fight with terrorist organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood, through effective, coordinated intelligence, and a shutting down of the financial networks that support terrorism, and a homeland security program that effectively targets foreign threats while protecting the Constitutional rights of American citizens. You want a fight, President Obama?

Let's fight to make sure that the U.N. inspectors can do their work in Syria, and that we vigorously enforce a non-proliferation treaty, and that former enemies and current allies like Russia safeguard and ultimately eliminate their stores of chemical, biological, and nuclear agents, and that nations like Iran never use the terrible weapons already in their possession, and that the arms merchants in our own country stop feeding the countless wars that rage across the globe. You want a fight, President Obama?

Let's fight to make sure our so-called allies in the Middle East, the Saudis and the Egyptians, stop oppressing their own people, and suppressing dissent, and tolerating corruption and inequality, and mismanaging their economies so that their youth grow up without education, without prospects, without hope, the ready recruits of terrorist cells. You want a fight, President Obama? Let's fight to wean ourselves off Middle East oil, through sensible development of our enormous domestic oil and gas resources.

Those are the battles that we need to fight. Those are the battles that we willingly join. The battles against ignorance and intolerance. Corruption and greed. Poverty and despair. The consequences of war are dire, the sacrifices immeasurable. We may have occasion in our lifetime to once again rise up in defense of our freedom, and pay the wages of war. But we ought not — we will not — travel down that hellish path blindly. Nor should we allow those who would march off and pay the ultimate sacrifice, who would prove the full measure of devotion with their blood, to make such an awful sacrifice in vain."

This speech was originally delivered by then-Sen. Barack Obama in 2002 in Chicago to protest US involvement in Iraq. To see how minor the changes I made are, view the transcript of the original speech: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99591469