Fifty-one career diplomats from across the State Department have signed an internal cable calling for a new US policy on Syria, including more direct action against Syrian dictator Bashar Assad, CBS News has learned.
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“Failure to stem Assad’s flagrant abuses will only bolster the ideological appeal of groups such as Daesh, even as they endure tactical setbacks on the battlefield”, the memo said, using an alternative name for the Islamic State, also known as ISIS and ISIL. The position is at odds with US policy. “The status quo in Syria will continue to present increasingly dire, if not disastrous, humanitarian, diplomatic and terrorism-related challenges”.
One senior official said that the test for whether these proposals for more aggressive action are given high-level consideration will be whether they “fall in line with our contention that there is no military solution to the conflict in Syria”.
The dissent memo said the signers were not “advocating for a slippery slope that ends in a military confrontation with Russian Federation”, although it was not clear how such a clash could be avoided, given the already-crowded skies over Syria and Russia’s support for Assad. He has complained privately that White House resistance to more intervention has hurt efforts to persuade Russian Federation, in particular, to take a tougher tone with Assad.
Back in 2013 “a highly classified assessment, put together by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, then led by General Martin Dempsey, forecast that the fall of the Assad regime would lead to chaos and, potentially, to Syria’s takeover by jihadi extremists, much as was then happening in Libya”, Seymour Hersh wrote in his article for London Review of Books in January 2016. The officials said the Russians had not previously struck there.
Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook was not able to confirm reports that Russia had hit Syrian rebels during a press briefing yesterday, but he did note that if such reports were true, the move would be “counterproductive” to the shared Russian-U.S. goal of defeating ISIS.
“And obviously that’s the first thing that’s problematic about this Russian conduct”, U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter told reporters, using an acronym for the radical group Islamic State. Sunnis are leading the fight against Assad, a member of Syria’s Shiite-linked Alawite minority.
But Obama has resisted, fearful of leading America into another war in the Muslim world after finding it impossible to withdraw USA forces from Afghanistan and keep forces out of Iraq.
“I don’t think it’s very realistic”, said Stephen Biddle, a George Washington University professor who has advised US commanders in the Middle East. No Russia or Syrian ground forces were in the area at the time.
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Several US officials said that while the White House is prepared to hear the diplomats’ dissenting viewpoint, it is not expected to spur any changes in President Barack Obama’s approach to Syria in his final seven months in office.
