U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Tuesday that 1,429 Syrians were killed by chemical weapons in an attack by the Assad regime on August 21.
While Kerry said the question is not over evidence but what the United States and the international community will do about it, President Barack Obama said he had made no decisions yet.
Professor Krister Knapp, a senior lecturer in the Department of History in Arts & Sciences at Washington University, says if the president asks Congress to weigh in, he may not get the support he wants.
"It would be nice for the president to have that support," Knapp said. "That is the way things should be done, but that being said, it’s not entirely clear that he needs that support to actually go ahead with strikes against the Syrian regime."
Knapp spoke with St. Louis Public Radio’s Maria Altman about the situation in Syria.
