In the news conference in Sweden, Obama said in making the case for military action: “My credibility is not on the line. The international community’s credibility is on the line. And America and Congress’s credibility is on the line because we give lip service to the notion that these international norms are important.”
Appearing before reporters with Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, Obama said: “I do think that we have to act. Because if we don’t, we are effectively saying that even though we may condemn it and issue resolutions and so forth and so on, somebody who is not shamed by resolutions can continue to act with impunity. And those international norms begin to erode. And other despots and authoritarian regimes can . . . say, that’s something we can get away with. And that then calls into question other international norms and laws of war, and whether those are going to be enforced.”
Asked by a Swedish reporter about “the moral force of nonviolence” and the dilemma of being a Nobel Peace Prize laureate while preparing to attack Syria, Obama reiterated that he was “certainly unworthy” of the prize compared to previous recipients and asked “what are our responsibilities” in confronting a world “full of violence and occasional evil.” He argued that when 1,400 innocent civilians, including 400 children, are gassed to death in a war that has already claimed tens of thousands of lives, “the moral thing to do is not to stand by and do nothing.”