President Obama just concluded his primetime address to the country, a speech in which he largely remade arguments he had offered over the past 96 hours for why it is in America's interest to consider a military strike against Syria. 
 
 Obama spoke for roughly 15 minutes, but the speech will be analyzed for a LOT longer than that. My takeaways on what he said -- and why he said it -- are below. 
 
 * This was a speech Obama had to give, not one he wanted to deliver. The reality of the situation -- the rising congressional opposition to a use-of-force resolution coupled with the uncertainty surrounding a nascent Russian-led effort to force Syria to hand over its chemical weapons -- meant that there really wasn't much definitive the president could say about the future of U.S. action in the region. And, he didn't. This was a holding-pattern speech. 
 
 * The core of the Obama argument was -- as it has been for days now -- a moral appeal. "When dictators commit atrocities, they depend on the world to look the other way," Obama said at one point. But, it wasn't just an appeal to our common morality. It was that if an act -- gassing your own people -- is condemned but tolerated by America, then the chances of other rogue actors pressing the bounds of acceptable behavior in the future increases. What Obama seemed to be saying is that this isn't about Syria -- it's about the next Syria and the one after that. 
 
 * Obama made a very carefully argued case for how America should think of its place in the world in the 21st century. He said twice that America was "not the world's policeman" but that in a case like Syria -- where the United States could send a moral message around the globe with small risks -- we should do so. That's a complex calculation that has a level of subjectivity built into it -- what small risks, large rewards actually are often lies in the eye of the man or woman making the decision. 
 
 * This is not Iraq. The president went above and beyond, rhetorically speaking, to drive home the point to the public that Syria is not Iraq and he won't let it be. "We cannot resolve someone else's civil war through force," he said bluntly at the start of his speech. He also made clear that he knew people want him to focus on growing the economy at home, not litigating other nations' conflicts. It was, in that way, a remarkably frank speech about the political realities/difficulties he faces in making the case for action. 
 
 What did you take away from the speech? Did what President Obama say change your mind? Why or why not? 
 
 More on this story: 
 
 Obama takes case for Syria strike to the public 
 
 Where Congress stands on Syria vote 
 
 Read the transcript of Obama's speech ||||| WASHINGTON -- President Obama did not appear to immediately change many minds in one crucial voting bloc that watched his national address Tuesday on Syria: Congress. 
 
 
 
 Lawmakers on both the left and right remained largely dug into their positions, or stayed undecided, after Obama urged the nation to back his bid to launch punitive missile strikes against Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government for allegedly using chemical weapons against its people. 
 
 
 
 Obama said he had asked Congress to delay voting to authorize the use of force so the United Nations Security Council could consider a Russian diplomatic initiative to get Assad’s government to give up its chemical arsenal. 
 
 TRANSCRIPT: Obama makes his case to the nation 
 
 
 
 In a joint statement, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who are among the most outspoken in calling for a military response, said they regretted that Obama “did not lay out a clearer plan to test the seriousness of the Russian and Syrian proposal to transfer the Assad regime’s chemical weapons to international custody.” 
 
 Others seized on the Russian offer as a potential way out of the crisis. 
 
 A group of eight senators, including McCain and Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), began writing an amended resolution that would authorize a U.S. military strike only if the U.N. failed to pass a resolution to empower the international community to remove Syria’s stockpile of chemical weapons. 
 
 “The president tonight made a forceful and persuasive case to the American people that confronting Syria’s use of chemical weapons will keep our people and our troops safer,” said Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the Armed Services Committee. “I believe Congress can best support the goal of a diplomatic solution by approving a resolution that authorizes the use of force if Syria refuses to give up its chemical weapons.” 
 
 
 
 The White House outreach to both sides of the aisle picked up almost immediately after the speech. 
 
 Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), who attended a meeting at the White House earlier Tuesday with Vice President Joe Biden, tweeted that he received a call from Obama’s chief of staff, Denis McDonough, only moments after the president finished his address to see if he had reconsidered. 
 
 He had not. "I am still a NO," Chaffetz wrote. 
 
 FULL COVERAGE: The debate over Syria 
 
 Lawmakers are watching public opinion, and several sought input from viewers as they weighed the options before them. 
 
 
 
 Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), the tea party conservative, said her office had been “flooded” with calls of opposition. She will vote against authorizing use of force. 
 
 
 
 “Pres. Obama's speech didn’t convince me,” tweeted Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), among the most outspoken opponents of a U.S.-led military strike on Syria. 
 
 
 
 With next year’s midterm campaigns about to launch, Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.), who chairs the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said earlier Tuesday that the 2014 elections would not be a referendum on the administration's handling of Syria. 
 
 But Obama's speech did little to sway potentially vulnerable Democratic incumbents in favor of a possible military strike. 
 
 Rep. Bill Foster (D-Ill.) said a military response was "something that we may ultimately need to consider" but that a diplomatic solution was preferable. "The choice to take military action is one of the most significant decisions a government can make and should only be used as a means of last resort," he said. 
 
 Rep. Ann McLane Kuster (D-N.H.), a freshman who was an enthusiastic backer of Obama in the 2008 primaries, said she continued "to have very grave concerns about the unintended consequences of U.S. military intervention in the region." 
 
 And Rep. Bruce Braley, the likely Democratic Senate nominee in Iowa, likewise said he was "still unconvinced that a limited U.S. military strike is the appropriate response to the atrocities committed in Syria." 
 
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 You can add location information to your Tweets, such as your city or precise location, from the web and via third-party applications. You always have the option to delete your Tweet location history. Learn more ||||| First, the news: President Obama announced tonight that he has "asked the leaders of Congress to postpone a vote to authorize the use of force while we pursue this diplomatic path." 
 
 So for now, the vote is off. The deal with Russia is on. 
 
 
 
 Mohammad Hannon/AP - Syrian protesters carry placards showing dead children to condemn the alleged poison gas attack on the suburbs of Damascus, during a protest in front of the Syrian Embassy, in Amman, Jordan, on Friday. 
 
 The problem is that if the diplomatic path is going to work, Russia and Syria need to believe Obama's threat to use force is credible. That means Obama needs to win enough public and congressional support that his threats remain credible. The result was an odd speech: One that had to make the case for war the administration was seeking on Sunday even as it pivoted toward the diplomatic solution the administration lucked into on Monday. 
 
 The White House had a surprisingly encouraging story to tell tonight: Already, the threat of military force has gotten Russia and Syria to propose concessions that were unthinkable mere weeks ago. The two have agreed, at least in principle, that if the United States forswears force against Syria, then Syria will sign the treaty against chemical weapons and give up its stockpiles of deadly gas. It would be a huge victory in the century-long fight to eradicate chemical weapons. 
 
 That deal will fall apart if Syria and Russia conclude that the White House's threats are empty. Obama needs the country's backing to strike Syria so he can strike a diplomatic bargain to get rid of Assad's chemical arsenal, thus ending America's interest in striking Syria. 
 
 But Obama can't get that support by going on prime time and asking Americans to help him bluff Russia. So in trying to win the country's backing, Obama opened with a very bad argument -- one that fundamentally misleads Americans about the nature of the intervention the president is proposing. 
 
 The situation profoundly changed, though, on August 21st, when Assad's government gassed to death over a thousand people, including hundreds of children. The images from this massacre are sickening, men, women, children lying in rows, killed by poison gas, others foaming at the mouth, gasping for breath, a father clutching his dead children, imploring them to get up and walk. On that terrible night, the world saw in gruesome detail the terrible nature of chemical weapons and why the overwhelming majority of humanity has declared them off limits, a crime against humanity and a violation of the laws of war. 
 
 He made a similarly emotional argument at the end: 
 
 And so to my friends on the right, I ask you to reconcile your commitment to America’s military might with the failure to act when a cause is so plainly just. To my friends on the left, I ask you to reconcile your belief in freedom and dignity for all people with those images of children writhing in pain and going still on a cold hospital floor, for sometimes resolutions and statements of condemnation are simply not enough. Indeed, I’d ask every member of Congress and those of you watching at home tonight to view those videos of the attack, and then ask, what kind of world will we live in if the United States of America sees a dictator brazenly violate international law with poison gas and we choose to look the other way? 
 
 The middle of the speech included more careful points about chemical weapons. But the big opening and closing were dedicated to a vivid, urgent and moral case against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's atrocities. But that just serves to highlight what Obama is not proposing: Ending the bloodshed in Syria. 
 
 Most Americans aren't paying close attention to the civil war in Syria. They don't know that more than 100,000 Syrians have died, and that chemical weapons account for less than 1 percent of those casualties. It's borderline perverse to use descriptions of pain, suffering and death to justify an intervention that would leave the cause of more than 99 percent of these deaths untouched. As Time's Michael Crowley tweeted, "The images of children crippled by conventional bombs were sickening, too." 
 
 To put it simply, if it is "the images of children writhing in pain and going still on a cold hospital floor" that motivate our intervention in Syria, why should we care whether the children were attacked with gas or steel? 
 
 If Obama's diplomatic path works, Assad will begin destroying his chemical weapons even as he continues slaughtering the opposition with conventional weapons. The Obama administration hopes, of course, that that won't happen -- that the deal to disarm him will open negotiating space for a deal to end the conflict. But there's no guarantee of that. France's draft U.N. Security Council resolution -- which the United States supports -- is silent on Assad's conventional weapons, and his use of them. That's a silence no reasonable viewer would infer from Obama's speech. 
 
 At this point, the White House has a surprisingly good plan to avoid war while achieving the limited goal of disarming Assad's chemical arsenal. But it relies on them making a very bad argument for a much larger war with much broader, more humanitarian, objectives. ||||| President Obama’s speech Tuesday night was the address of a deeply conflicted man. 
 
 One could almost see his relief that Russia has provided what may be a face-saving proposal that allows him to pull back from war while claiming victory. He is fighting a losing battle to persuade the world, the American people, and Congress that an attack on Syria is necessary. He doesn’t have the votes, and he knows it. 
 
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 reset Obama: U.S. military doesn't do 'pinprick' strikes 
 
 In his speech Tuesday night, the president focused narrowly on the Syrian regime’s use of chemical weapons, casting them only indirectly as threats to U.S. security. He bent over backwards to assure the American people that any actions he takes will be strictly limited (though the United States does not do “pinpricks,” he insisted). 
 
 (WATCH: Obama’s full speech on Syria) 
 
 The American public’s skepticism is often blamed on war-weariness. But the reality is that every central point the president, the administration, and war supporters have made has been almost impossible to defend. The American people might not be foreign-policy experts, but they know a weak argument when they see one. Here are nine examples of the contradictions in the case presented so far: 
 
 1. We are defending international “norms.” 
 
 How can one defend international norms by going against international majorities? How can we defend one norm (a prohibition on the use of chemical weapons) while breaking another (attacking another state, without U.N. Security Council support, in a case that’s clearly not about self-defense)? 
 
 2. If we don’t act, Bashar Assad will use chemical weapons again. 
 
 The Syrian leader doesn’t need to use them against his own people, especially when Russia is more than happy to supply him with conventional arms. In fact, one of the weaknesses of the evidence against him is that, in the absence of a real smoking gun, the administration still hasn’t explained why he used them in the first place; we know he is ruthless, but he had other means and he stood to lose more than he would gain. That remains the case in the future. 
 
 Then there’s Israel, often seen as threatened by Assad’s arsenal of poison gases. But the use of chemical weapons against the helpless is different from using them against states that can retaliate; since 1973, Assad hasn’t sent a single soldier to try to liberate the territories occupied by Israel since 1967, knowing what Israel could do to him if he tried. 
 
 In desperation, of course, leaders will often do the unthinkable. Whether or not we intervene, if Assad is going down, nothing — especially not “norms” — will stop him from using them. 
 
 3. If we don’t act, terrorist groups and militias may draw the lesson that they can use chemical weapons with impunity. 
 
 Terrorist groups don’t care about international norms; they are the anti-norm, and they are also less sensitive to deterrence; the only thing preventing al Qaeda from using WMD against its enemies is its lack of WMD. 
 
 What’s more, Syria is awash in jihadist groups, including affiliates of al Qaeda. Further weakening Assad’s control over his chemical arsenal would increase rather than decrease the possibility of such weapons falling into the wrong hands. 
 
 As for Hezbollah, Assad’s critical ally, if he is going down, the chances that he will try to hand the group chemical weapons increase, not decrease. 
 
 4. U.S. credibility is on the line if Obama doesn’t act. 
 
 What credibility? Arabs think America intervenes too much, not too little, and conspiracy theories blame the United States for most problems in almost every country. The problem is not the absence of American will to intervene, but lack of trust in American aims. Intervention will only increase that anger and suspicion. 
 
 It is not enough in any case to go to war over “credibility”; that’s the kind of thinking that got us into Korea and Vietnam. 
 
 5. Iran will be emboldened if we don’t act: 
 
 Iran, like the rest of the region, doesn’t believe a possible American intervention in Syria would be over WMD. And seeing how hard it has been to get even a limited strike approved by Congress, this will hardly scare them. 
 
 Moreover, if U.S. voters see the consequences of a Syria strike as costly, imagine how they’ll feel when they contemplate the price tag of bombing Iran. 
 
 Nor is it clear how Iran would react. Iranian leaders might well note that the United States attacked Iraq and Syria, but not nuclear North Korea. Their incentive to acquire nukes only increases. 
 
 6. It’s the moral thing to do. 
 
 While Assad’s behavior is almost universally acknowledged to be morally abhorrent, even beyond his use of chemical weapons, what’s at stake now is whether the world’s response is seen as “moral.” 
 
 If a military response without a Security Council resolution is moral, why is it the case that even many U.S. allies, who are offended by Assad’s behavior, think it is the wrong thing to do? These allies worry that the proposed action is unlikely to impact the balance of the war; any degradation of Assad’s army will likely be met by an increase in Russian support and in anti-American sentiment. 
 
 All of which raises the question: Can moral action be taken without regard to consequences? Is punitive action moral if it has no behavioral consequences — knowing that innocent lives will inevitably be lost in the process? 
 
 7. Assad has broken the world’s red line. 
 
 The case that Assad broke norms on the use of chemical weapons is strong. But where is the international norm requiring that the response in such cases must be military action, or that this military action must be taken by the United States? 
 
 8. Assad has broken Obama’s red line. 
 
 Perhaps, but defending a president’s words is hardly reason for a nation to go to war. It’s also worth noting that the president never said that if Assad used chemical weapons, the United States would use force against him, let alone without the Security Council’s support. Obama has allowed his opponents to define the meaning of his own words. 
 
 9. “We are the United States of America.” 
 
 This is hardly persuasive when memory of the Iraq war looms large: the lowest estimate of civilians killed in the American-led war is higher than all the casualties in the Syrian conflict so far. And if anything, precisely because the United States is a proud democracy, our presidents shouldn’t go to war without the support of the American people. 
 
 *** 
 
 While the president’s address focused mostly on preventing Syria from using chemical weapons and keeping those weapons from falling into the wrong hands, it is clear that the proposed military action does not promise either. Its presumed effectiveness, moreover, rests on the assumption that the mere threat of escalation will deter Assad in the future. And yet the president promised only limited action, and all but promised not to act without the consent of Congress. 
 
 The Russian proposal cuts both ways for the president. On the one hand, it enhances his case with Congress, where arguably the credible threat of using force is the best leverage to get a favorable deal. On the other hand, it promises, through diplomacy, to neutralize Assad’s chemical weapons, exposing the fact that the proposed military action does not do the same. 
 
 Shibley Telhami is Anwar Sadat professor at the University of Maryland and senior fellow at the Saban Center of the Brookings Institution. His new book is The World Through Arab Eyes: Arab Public Opinion and the Reshaping of the Middle East. ||||| The president's White House speech played it safe, doing little to answer the concerns of doves who oppose the war and hawks who find his plan too small to matter. 
 
 Reuters 
 
 With public opinion on Syria ebbing away from him, President Obama seemingly had two choices for his address to the nation Tuesday night: He could deliver a newly impassioned and emotional version of his case that limited military strikes were necessary and effective. Or he could seize on the premise that circumstances had changed and announce a new policy for how to handle them. 
 
 Instead of either, however, Obama chose to play it very safe. 
 
 The president's speech in the White House's East Room was short -- clocking in at a neat 15 minutes -- and offered hardly anything new. As he has for days, Obama argued that while the the civil war in Syria is a tragedy, there was no justification for American intervention until the use of chemical weapons necessitated it. And he praised, if tentatively, the day's major development -- a nascent but fragile agreement involving Russia that would see Syria surrender its chemical weapons and sign an international treaty prohibiting their use. 
 
 He also emphasized that any attack would be very limited in scope. "I will not put American boots on the ground in Syria," he said. "I will not pursue an open-ended action like Iraq or Afghanistan. I will not pursue a prolonged air campaign like Libya or Kosovo. This would be a targeted strike to achieve a clear objective: deterring the use of chemical weapons and degrading Assad's capabilities." 
 
 Much of the speech was structured as a response to common objections to attacking Syria. And it was here that the lack of novel or more developed replies was most striking. A White House address like this is necessarily targeted to all a wide audience, including those who have paid little attention to the Beltway battle over an attack and might be unfamiliar with the debate. Still, with the minimal support he has for a strike collapsing, he seems to be in no position to hit the same notes. 
 
 Nor did he make much of an emotional plea, though he cited the same horrible deaths of children in sarin attacks that Samantha Power and Susan Rice have made in recent days. The president got most fired up, instead, as he closed his remarks. Asking the right to follow through on its commitment to American military force and the left to follow through on it humanitarian ideals, he asked: 
 
 What kind of world will we live in if the United States of America sees a dictator brazenly violate international law with poison gas and we choose to look the other way? ... Terrible things happen across the globe, and it is beyond our means to right every wrong. But when, with modest effort and risk, we can stop children from being gassed to death and thereby make our own children safer over the long run, I believe we should act. That's what makes America different. That's what makes us exceptional. 
 
 Yet despite the FAQ-like format, Obama perhaps left more questions unanswered than he resolved. 
 
 Disappointingly for hawks and liberal interventionists, the president stubbornly insisted he would not seek to topple Bashar al-Assad -- though in a concession to critics who groaned at John Kerry's promise than an attack would be "unbelievably small," Obama said even a limited campaign would get results: "The United States military doesn't do pinpricks. Even a limited strike will send a message to Assad that no other nation can deliver." But the president didn't offer much reassurance to anyone skeptical about the deterrent power of such a strike, nor did he answer the critique that Assad has killed civilians --including, yes, children -- quite effectively with conventional weapons. 
 
 The administration's argument that sarin attacks in a Syrian neighborhood threaten national security has failed to rouse many in Congress. Obama's reply tonight was elaborate, imagining that failure to act would encourage further attacks by other dictators, endanger regional allies, and in the future perhaps result in American soldiers being gassed. He didn't explain why, for example, Saddam Hussein's use of gas in the 1980s and 1990s didn't create a rash of chemical-weapons attacks, and the vague domino effect and indeterminate timeline seem unlikely to convince the many Americans who have turned against intervention after a decade of wars. Obama's circumspection sometimes undermined his own case, as when he pointed out, "The Assad regime does not have the ability to seriously threaten our military." 
 
 If the speech was intended to sum up the case for war against Syria, it seemed mostly to provide the sharpest summation of Obama's central paradox. Though the president seems personally upset by the chemical-weapons attacks, he knows Americans are weary of war and has little apparent appetite for it himself, so he has to play it safe. That means he does things like promise American boots won't be on the ground, and insists Assad can't touch America. 
 
 But those arguments undermine the case for war, too. If Assad can't hurt Americans, why is it a national-security concern? If American attacks will be so limited, will they even really make much difference, either to stop the slaughter or as a future deterrent? And if it's so important to prevent gas attacks that "brazenly violate international law," why is Obama so willing to conduct a punitive strike that seems to most experts to violate international law? 
 
 With the nation watching, Obama had a chance to resolve these contradictions, and he didn't do it -- he didn't even try. Luckily for him, speeches seldom matter. If the diplomatic maneuverings to get Assad to turn over his chemical weapons succeed, this speech will look like a moment of wise caution when the president treaded water rather than making waves. If they fail, however, he will have squandered a chance -- will anyone really heed his second White House speech on Syria, should he have to make one?
– President Obama's Syria speech last night was only 15 minutes long, but it "will be analyzed for a LOT longer than that," writes Chris Cillizza in the Washington Post. But—because Congress isn't onboard with a strike on Syria and we don't yet know how Russia's plan to get Syria's chemical weapons will turn out—"there really wasn't much definitive the president could say," Cillizza writes. "And, he didn't. This was a holding pattern speech." It was also an "odd" one, writes fellow Post columnist Ezra Klein. Obama "had to make the case for war the administration was seeking on Sunday even as [he] pivoted towards the diplomatic solution the administration lucked into on Monday." More reactions: Shibley Telhami, writing at Politico, offers up nine examples of weak arguments Obama made—including that inaction sends terrorists the message that they can use chemical weapons with no consequences. But "terrorist groups don’t care about international norms ... the only thing preventing al-Qaeda from using WMD against its enemies is its lack of WMD." On Twitter, Bloomberg View columnist Jeffrey Goldberg points out another contradiction: "After two years of saying Assad should go, the message now is Assad can stay. We just want to take away one of his weapons systems." There's more where that came from. Indeed, Klein points out in his column that Obama is not actually proposing we end the bloodshed. "Chemical weapons account for less than 1%" of the more than 100,000 casualties in Syria. "It’s borderline perverse to use descriptions of pain, suffering, and death to justify an intervention that would leave the cause of more than 99% of these deaths untouched." Among other unresolved critiques, David A. Graham points out these in the Atlantic: "If Assad can't hurt Americans, why is it a national-security concern? If American attacks will be so limited, will they even really make much difference, either to stop the slaughter or as a future deterrent? And if it's so important to prevent gas attacks that 'brazenly violate international law,' why is Obama so willing to conduct a punitive strike that seems to violate international law?" Many congress members of both stripes were similarly unconvinced, the Los Angeles Times reports, including John McCain and Lindsey Graham, who said in a statement that Obama failed to "lay out a clearer plan to test the seriousness of the Russian and Syrian proposal to transfer the Assad regime’s chemical weapons to international custody." In the National Journal, Ron Fournier actually does find some things to praise ("the president deserves credit for rethinking his plan to wage war without congressional approval," for one thing), but in the end, both his best and worst characteristics were on display—and "it's far easier to catalogue the worst." One anonymous Democratic strategist tells Fournier the Syria situation is "one of the most humiliating episodes in presidential history."