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Syria and the “Dissent Channel”
The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal are both reporting today that they have obtained or seen a draft copy of a State Department internal memo, signed by more than 50 diplomats, “urging the United States to carry out military strikes against the government of President Bashar al-Assad to stop its persistent violations of a cease-fire in the country’s five-year-old civil war.”
Neither have published the whole memo, which is frustrating: It’s impossible to evaluate an argument you can’t read. But the Times says it calls for “a judicious use of stand-off and air weapons, which would undergird and drive a more focused and hard-nosed U.S.-led diplomatic process.” The memo was apparently filed in the so-called “dissent channel,” established during the Vietnam War so that State Department employees could protest policies made by high-level officials without fear of reprisal. According to the Times,
While there are no widely recognized names, higher-level State Department officials are known to share their concerns. Mr. Kerry himself has pushed for stronger American action against Syria, in part to force a diplomatic solution on Mr. Assad. The president has resisted such pressure, and has been backed up by his military commanders, who have raised questions about what would happen in the event that Mr. Assad was forced from power — a scenario that the draft memo does not address.
The memo apparently acknowledged that military action would have risks, although it isn’t clear about exactly what its authors believe those risks to be. The risks, according to the Times, include, “not least,”
further tensions with Russia, which has intervened in the war on Mr. Assad’s behalf and helped negotiate a cease-fire. Those tensions increased on Thursday when, according to a senior Pentagon official, Russia conducted airstrikes in southern Syria against American-backed forces fighting the Islamic State.
There are, as far as I can see, two massive risks: The first is chaos if Assad is forced from power, which could permit ISIS or other jihadi actors to prevail in the ungoverned spaces. The second is a direct confrontation with Russia. Apparently, the dissenting State Department officials insisted in the memo that they were not “advocating for a slippery slope that ends in a military confrontation with Russia,” but rather “a credible threat of military action to keep Mr. Assad in line.”
I don’t know how representative this memo is of State Department thinking generally, nor do I know how if the Times’ assessment of the views of the military are accurate. But the impression they give is of a sharp disjunct between the military’s assessment and that of State Department rank-and-file, with Obama on the side of the military.
Thoughts?
Published in General
Claire, it is entirely without malice or snark that I demurred. On issue after issue within this mess, you and I have different motivations, so debating details is not helpful. I’m not saying you’re bad. I’m saying we disagree.
My view on refugees streaming from that place differs from yours, from top to bottom. Alex Nowrasteh says that we have a moral duty to stop hurting people with our “closed” borders. I say that we have a moral duty to stop hurting ourselves with open borders, and that “other people” come second, especially when they are herded and shovelled at our walls by hostile elements from ISIS to the Guadalajara waiters’ union. That doesn’t make AN a bad guy any more than you.
Not only will we not gut out a tough campaign — I don’t even trust our government’s motives.
This site purports to be fact-checking claims emerging from Syria and is fairly clear about its methodology.
Let the record show who turned this into a Trump thread, with the OP joining in in #22.
Those last two sentences are just absurd. Obama is the patron saint of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Iranian nuclear arsenal, the Reconquista, and the new Hijra. As for Putin-love, we have the “reset” button and “Tell Vladimir…”
Trump’s prioritization of attacking ISIS is not the kind of fawning gratuitous support of evil that Obama’s actions have been. None of Obama’s actions I listed are justified as siding against a greater or more immediate evil. I’m sure you agree that they are all the opposite.
Yeah. Lost cause, man.
I cannot support any military action under a BHO or HRC administration. Benghazi was the straw that broke the camel’s back. BHO & HRC, this administration showed that when times get tough our political leadership will go hide and leave our people on the pointed edge without resources and support then lie to the American people about the event to cover their backsides. As long as these people are in power I can not support sending our people into harms way and will actively resist it being done.
This kind of piece – though it doesn’t tell us how it works out in the long run.
Wrt who’s moderate and who’s not, this interview in Syria Deeply (thanks for the rec, btw) includes:
It seems (inevitably) a political determination – but with external and Syrian opinion at odds.
Maybe it isn’t a moderate society? Or at least no longer. What response does that require?
Zafar,
The coalition would have been easy. It’s just that the Administration would have been forced to give up the Iran Deal. I, of course, consider the lack of the existence of the Iran Deal a net gain. If a large coalition of Middle Eastern states backed by Europe and the USA went into Syria, Iran could either be silent or be destroyed. I, of course, don’t care which outcome the mullahs would choose. I would assume that all of the states now in range (1,200 miles) of the medium range missile Iran already has, would be pleased to see an end of the regime. Of course, soon the Iranians will have a full ICBM and then even the great minds of Europe and Ben Rhodes will see their mistake, though possibly not admit it. They’re big on lying technology but on military technology not so much.
Regards,
Jim
Pretty clearly we’re not dealing with budding liberal democrats.
It requires, first, a ceasefire sufficient to alleviate starvation and an end to the barrel bombing. The first priority has to be the end to the mass murder. The end result will be divided by sect and ethnicity, I would imagine: There’s no way to put it back together again. The outlines would probably be something along the lines of this RAND proposal. But even that best-of-a-lot-of-awful scenarios is predicated on Russian and Iranian cooperation.