How We Got to the Syria Mess
How We Got to the Syria Mess – Washington Post
Americans and Europeans are seeing the results of four years of U.S. disengagement in the Middle East. A country destroyed, with half its people displaced from their homes. Hundreds of thousands of refugees besieging an unready Europe. And now, Russian warplanes bombing U.S.-allied forces as American officials alternate between clucking reprovingly and insisting bravely that Russian President Vladimir Putin will be sorry in the end. That is a tempting dream, but it represents the same wishful thinking that got us here in the first place.
How did we get here? It’s worth recalling, briefly, a bit of history. When Secretary of State John F. Kerry took office at the beginning of President Obama’s second term, he argued that Syria could be saved only with a political solution: The United States did not want to repeat its Iraq mistake and chase President Bashar al-Assad and his regime out of office with nothing to take their place. But, he said, the regime would not negotiate seriously until its opposition was strengthened, and so Mr. Kerry and others in the administration favored U.S. assistance, including training for the rebels, protection of safe zones where they could begin to govern without fear of Mr. Assad’s barrel bombs and chlorine gas, some arms and other military aid.
Mr. Obama would never agree; or rather, sometimes he agreed, and failed to follow through, and sometimes he just said no. Mr. Kerry was left with no option but diplomacy, in particular begging Russia and Iran to bail him out…
