Do It for the Kids: Rice and Power Make the Emotional Case for Striking Syria
The White House national-security adviser and the U.S. ambassador to the UN stick to a heart-string tugging script on Syria.

Either U.S. Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power and National Security Adviser Susan Rice have been working from a script or the two foreign-policy pros, both mothers, share a remarkable affinity for making similar points in the same way. There's a clear similarity between their vivid descriptions of gassed Syrian children during recent speeches making the administration's case for congressional authorization to use force against the regime of Bashar al-Assad.
As the administration finds that its other messages are, to be kind, not breaking through, its top female national security officials have been making the case that it's about the kids. They know that it is impossible to look at the pictures of fat babies and adorable toddlers wrapped for burial in late August and not be horrified -- not if you have an ounce of humanity. But the question has never been that there was an atrocity committed; the debate has been what to do in response to it. Rice, who spoke on Monday at the New American Foundation in Washington, made an even more impassioned call to consider the children of Syria than Power, who delivered remarks Friday at the Center for American Progress. Their three big points about the little ones:
I've been to more than my share of war zones. Each is horrible and uniquely tragic. But this most recent atrocity is particularly gut-wrenching. And unlike those tragedies of earlier decades, we have the technology on our computers and our smartphones to see the full force unfold in real time.
Children lined up in shrouds, their voices forever silenced; devastated mothers and fathers kissing their children goodbye, some pulling the white sheet up tight around their beautiful faces as if tucking them in for the last time. There are no words of condemnation strong enough to capture such infinite cruelty, but where words may fail us action must not.
Every adult American, every member of Congress should watch those videos for themselves, see that suffering, look at the eyes of those men and women, those babies, and dare to turn away and forsake them.