How big of a disaster is the Obama administration’s approach to Syria? So big that even reporter David Sanger, who can hardly be accused of being unfriendly to the administration (he has been the recipient of some of its most self-serving leaks), is essentially editorializing disapprovingly on the front page of the New York Times about where this is heading. He writes:
Most of the arms shipped at the behest of Saudi Arabia and Qatar to supply Syrian rebel groups fighting the government of Bashar al-Assad are going to hard-line Islamic jihadists, and not the more secular opposition groups that the West wants to bolster, according to American officials and Middle Eastern diplomats.
That conclusion, of which President Obama and other senior officials are aware from classified assessments of the Syrian conflict that has now claimed more than 25,000 lives, casts into doubt whether the White House’s strategy of minimal and indirect intervention in the Syrian conflict is accomplishing its intended purpose of helping a democratic-minded opposition topple an oppressive government, or is instead sowing the seeds of future insurgencies hostile to the United States.
The second paragraph may be phrased as a question but there is little doubt what Sanger thinks. Pretty much the same thing that most informed observers think. As Jackson Diehl writes in the Washington Post (in an opinion piece that is labeled as such): “His catastrophic mishandling of the revolution in Syria” may well turn out to be “the signal foreign policy disaster for Barack Obama.”
Diehl traces the origins of that disaster back to Obama’s original intention to “engage” with Bashar Assad and boost him as a supposed “moderate,” which led to the tardiness of the president’s decision to call for his ouster after the start of the revolution and now to the hands-off attitude which is indirectly empowering Syrian jihadists who are receiving arms from the Gulf while more moderate opposition groups go begging. It is still not too late for the U.S. to take a more constructive approach, as I suggested as long ago as December 2011 in The Weekly Standard and as recently as September (in an article co-authored with Michael Doran) in the New York Times, but every day that the U.S. stands on the sidelines the disaster grows worse, both morally and strategically, and it spreads from Syria to bordering states such as Turkey.
Debka: n n n"New W. intelligence: Syrian rebels don’t have the numbers to win" n nInteresting read. n nWe should carefully calibrate the flow of arms to rebels. We want this civil war to result in the breakup of Syria, don't we? n n
A couplen of naive questions: n nIf the Islamists and the Assad loyalists kill each other long enough, isn't that a good thing for the secularists who will be still alive when the nightmare finally ends? n nAlso why is it so very bad that Turkey is on the hot seat now? Hasn't the Edorgan regime been getting too big for its breeches of late? Wouldn't it be a good thing for him to come begging on his knees for help from NATO allies? And doesn't conflict between Syria and Turkey pour a welcome bucket of ice over the warming relations between Turkey and Iran? n nPlease correct me if I'm wrong.
Hi Max nWhat will be the more constructive approach in Syria? Who are the moderate opposition? How do we know which one is which? It is a civil war when both sides probably hate Americans. Haw we even practically intervene without putting boots on the ground or arranging some kind of “no fly zone.” I am just afraid we might start another endless war and then building the nation with no clear goals and objectives. n n
Do you guys ever get tired of war? Of the trillions wasted in 'nation building'? Of watching the planes come back from foreign lands filled with flag draped coffins? War. And failure. That's the neocon position
I don't expect spelling mistakes in "Commentary", of all plces. Please correct your headline.
It is difficult to even sketch out what would be a desirable outcome in Syria. We certainly don't want Iran, Hezbollah and Assad to triumph. We also don't want another Muslim Brotherhood state to replace Assad. Sounds as though a continuing war that wears down the adherents of both of the undesirable ideologiesof Shia and Sunni supremacy suits us best. Why should the West take sides in a Sunni/Shiah religious war? Not nice, of course, but nothing in that neighbourhood is.