In a recent New Your Times editorial titled, “An Incoherent Syria War Strategy,” the paper finally came to the conclusion most Americans reached long ago; we never had a workable strategy regarding Syria and we still don’t.
As an unofficial arm of the DNC (Democratic National Committee) politically, the Times was reluctant to say that the policy “to train and arm so-called moderate rebels to take on the Islamic State” was a joke when it was originally proposed last year. Now they are finally willing to admit it; at least that’s something.
Strangely, in the more than 500 words the Times made only two references to the administration and no specific reference to President Obama. It’s as if he just disappeared from the decision-making process regarding our folly in Syria. JFK said it best, “Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan.” Five hundred words is one word for every million dollars we spent arming somebody and I bet you can’t tell me who or what they stand for.
Trying to pick a side in Syria is impossible; there are no good guys. Our policy to vet the rebels was an impossibility, now we propose to vet their leaders instead as if they actually controlled their factious and splintered groups. As I wrote more than a year ago, “neither side in this conflict is worthy of our support; send in some humanitarian aid to relieve the suffering – that’s all.”
In a 60 Minutes interview, President Obama insisted that recent military intervention by Russian President Vladimir Putin just shows how weak the Russians are; since we have intervened all over the region for years with no appreciable success, what does that say about us?
Be it Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Syria, our record of supporting proxy regimes and armies in the region has been woeful, We do not understand their values any more than they understand ours, but we keep trying to remake these fatally flawed allies of convenience into mini-Americas. This week’s massive suicide bombing at a peace rally in Ankara, Turkey, shows once again the depth of the generations-old level of religious, cultural, and tribal hatred in the area, sparked by radicals.
It is past time for President Obama to stop nibbling around the edges trying to act tough on Syria without risk; ISIS, Iran, the Syrians, the rebels, and the Russians have called his bluff in almost every case. Either get in there and fight, if there is something worth fighting for – which I doubt – or abandon the field. Our troops in the region and the nation deserve better than our continued no-policy, policies, for which no one will accept responsibility.