Eli Lake, Columnist

Obama Lectures on Syria, a Crisis He Exacerbated

He tells the UN that "the savagery in Syria must be brought to an end." Where was his leadership a year ago, or five years ago?

September 22, 2016 at 10:00 AM UTC

By Eli Lake

Eli Lake is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering national security and foreign policy. He was the senior national security correspondent for the Daily Beast and covered national security and intelligence for the Washington Times, the New York Sun and UPI.

Diplomacy in action.
Photographer: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

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When future historians debate why the U.S. did so little to stop the tragedy in Syria, they should dig up the speech President Barack Obama just gave at a U.N. summit on refugees.

While Democrats signaled their collective virtue by denouncing a tweet from Donald Trump Jr. that compared Syrian refugees to Skittles, Obama lectured foreign ministers and heads of state this week on the same topic. "And just as failure to act in the past, for example, by turning away Jews fleeing Nazi Germany, is a stain on our collective conscience," Obama said, "I believe history will judge us harshly if we do not rise to this moment."