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President Obama was late and weak in Syria, missing the chance to snuff out that civil war before it really began. Years of destruction and hundreds of thousands of deaths followed. Now President Trump seems prepared to double down on Obama's failure. The region will be worse off, and the US position will be weakened as a result.
Would you trust America?By Michael Gerson
". . . American policy in Syria since the outbreak of civil war in 2011 has been a story of confusion, hesitation and betrayal. President Barack Obama’s special adviser for transition in Syria, Frederic Hof, recently provided an important part of the historical record. In a blog post on the Atlantic Council’s site, he described Obama-era policy on Syria as a series of commitments broken and red lines ignored. Obama “would deal with internal dissent,” writes Hof, “by taking officials through multi-step, worst-case, hypothetical scenarios of what might happen in the wake of any American attempt, no matter how modest, to complicate regime mass murder.” Eventually it became clear to Hof that the real reason for this reluctance was an overriding desire to secure a nuclear deal with Iran, even if this meant sacrificing “Syrian children and their parents.”
The Syrian conflict, in Obama’s description, was “someone else’s civil war.” This is one area of disturbing foreign policy continuity between Obama and President Trump. In July 2017, the Trump administration ended the covert CIA operation to arm anti-Assad rebels. “This is a momentous decision,” observed one official on background. “Putin won in Syria.” Now the president has frozen more than $200 million intended for Syrian reconstruction and announced — apparently against the advice of his military — “We’ll be coming out of Syria very soon.” This would involve the withdrawal of about 2,000 U.S. troops. “Let the other people take care of it now,” says Trump.
Just to be clear, “the other people” are Russians, Iranians, Hezbollah terrorists and members of the Assad regime. The victory of Assad might eventually bring what President John F. Kennedy called “the peace of the grave [and] the security of the slave.” But the immediate result of an American withdrawal would be a major escalation of the conflict in eastern Syria. It would also remove protection from our few remaining allies on the ground — rewarding their faith with one more parting slap. . . ."
Would you trust America?By Michael Gerson
". . . American policy in Syria since the outbreak of civil war in 2011 has been a story of confusion, hesitation and betrayal. President Barack Obama’s special adviser for transition in Syria, Frederic Hof, recently provided an important part of the historical record. In a blog post on the Atlantic Council’s site, he described Obama-era policy on Syria as a series of commitments broken and red lines ignored. Obama “would deal with internal dissent,” writes Hof, “by taking officials through multi-step, worst-case, hypothetical scenarios of what might happen in the wake of any American attempt, no matter how modest, to complicate regime mass murder.” Eventually it became clear to Hof that the real reason for this reluctance was an overriding desire to secure a nuclear deal with Iran, even if this meant sacrificing “Syrian children and their parents.”
The Syrian conflict, in Obama’s description, was “someone else’s civil war.” This is one area of disturbing foreign policy continuity between Obama and President Trump. In July 2017, the Trump administration ended the covert CIA operation to arm anti-Assad rebels. “This is a momentous decision,” observed one official on background. “Putin won in Syria.” Now the president has frozen more than $200 million intended for Syrian reconstruction and announced — apparently against the advice of his military — “We’ll be coming out of Syria very soon.” This would involve the withdrawal of about 2,000 U.S. troops. “Let the other people take care of it now,” says Trump.
Just to be clear, “the other people” are Russians, Iranians, Hezbollah terrorists and members of the Assad regime. The victory of Assad might eventually bring what President John F. Kennedy called “the peace of the grave [and] the security of the slave.” But the immediate result of an American withdrawal would be a major escalation of the conflict in eastern Syria. It would also remove protection from our few remaining allies on the ground — rewarding their faith with one more parting slap. . . ."