horse of george

Obama in CNN interview says can't intervene in Syria without UN mandate even though he maintains core American interests are threatened by the violence - not that I support going into Syria, but since Russia and China, with UN veto power, have interests which very often do not coordinate with ours, seems rather foolish to explicitly say we're not doing anything unless the UN backs it up - at very least it says to Assad [and Iran] 'don't you fret about us'. Is this a case of Obama misspeaking, or this him saying what he firmly believes? I assume the latter. Then he says to go in without a UN directive would only increase dislike of America in the region, and that's just cause to avoid getting involved, again, even though he's admitted to our national interests being threatened - how does that make any sense? For one, there's probably as many people in the region who would welcome our intervention as who would resent it, so makes no sense there - secondly, those who dislike us are going to dislike us no matter what, if only because of our support of Israel - which leads to third reason this statement makes no sense: if our best interests are served by an intervention, who cares what people think? Again, I'm not supporting an intervention - I'm just attempting to make sense of what Obama said and coming to conclusion he was speaking nonsense - sure, maybe he's just talking gibberish in order to buy time or some such thing; but if that's the case, making explicit statements that events may force you to contradict later seems unwise.