The document repeatedly called for “targeted military strikes” against Assad, who with the backing of Russian Federation and Iran has been fighting a collection of rebels – including ISIS – for over five years, the newspaper reported late Thursday.
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Secretary of State John Kerry, visiting Copenhagen, told Reuters: “It’s an important statement and I respect the process, very, very much”.
The petition by American diplomats who disagree with the Obama administration’s Syria policy was distributed on the State Department’s “Dissent Channel”, meant to give US foreign service professionals an opportunity to express their candid views, even if they conflict with established government policy, without fear of retribution or reprisals.
This same essential point was candidly acknowledged by Anthony Cordesman, a long-time Pentagon adviser from the Center for worldwide and Strategic Studies, in a report last week: “The United States still has yet to show that it can create any meaningful US-supported Arab rebel force”, he wrote. Moreover, liquidating a regime will hardly facilitate successful progress in the fight against terrorism.
The Kremlin said on Friday such a move would plunge the entire region into complete chaos.
The dissent document was transmitted internally in a confidential form and since has been classified, said officials who weren’t authorised to discuss such material and insisted on anonymity.
The official said the cable was unlikely to alter that, or shift Obama’s focus on Islamic State.
Some time passed after that communication but Russian Federation carried out a subsequent strike, the US official said.
While use of the “dissent channel” is not unique, according to USA officials, the number of diplomats signing on was.
The signatories, mostly rank-and-file diplomats who had worked on Syria policy, may have put their careers at risk, current and former officials said.
Obama’s aides also have acknowledged privately that even if the president did decide to take a more aggressive stance against Assad, that would be a much riskier operation now that Russian forces, especially warplanes, are now directly supporting Moscow’s ally Assad. Presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, for instance, was among senior aides who urged Obama early in the Syrian conflict to take a stronger stand militarily against Assad. The plan, which had backing from other Cabinet officials, was rejected by President Barack Obama and his White House aides.
Carter recalled that when the Russians first sent forces to Syria they said their goal was to fight the Islamic State. In mid-March, President Vladimir Putin ordered the bulk of Russia’s contingent in Syria to withdraw, but Moscow has continued its active support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and, according to some analysts, honed its military capabilities to better help the Syrian army.
In their daily press briefing, State Department spokesman John Kirby confirmed the existence of the “dissent channel message”, saying that it is extremely unusual for such a message to exist, let alone have a lot of signatures, as this one does.
“We are reviewing the cable now, which came up very recently, and I am not going to comment on the contents”.
The “dissent channel” mechanism, which allows officials to offer alternative views on foreign policy without fear of retaliation, was established during the Vietnam War in the 1960s so that senior officials of the state department could access alternative policy views.
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Russia’s foreign minister said Thursday that he believes the US may hope to use al-Qaida’s branch in Syria to unseat Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government.
