Obama - Syria Delusions, Round Two

In 2012, the group that is supposed to be the senior national security team–the secretary of state (Hillary Clinton), secretary of defense (Leon Panetta), and CIA director (David Petraeus)–urged President Obama to support the Syrian rebels. He rejected their unanimous advice, instead maligning the rebels (“pharmacists”) while they were risking and often losing their lives fighting the Assad regime and ISIS. In 2014, Clinton said “The failure to help build up a credible fighting force of the people who were the originators of the protests against Assad … the failure to do that left a big vacuum, which the jihadists have now filled.”

President Barack Obama’s top military and intelligence advisers, convinced Russia won’t abide by a cease-fire in Syria, are pushing for ways to increase pressure on Moscow, including expanding covert military assistance for some rebels now taking a pounding from Russian airstrikes.

Defense Secretary Ash Carter; Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and Central Intelligence Agency Director John Brennan have voiced increasingly tough views in White House meetings, calling for new measures to “inflict real pain on the Russians,” a senior administration official said.

The Journal story explains the concerns voiced by the Pentagon:

Mr. Carter was upset about the Russian claims because he had explicitly ruled out such discussions, the officials said.

The Pentagon believes Russia was trying to try to drive a wedge between the U.S. and its coalition partners and to make it look like Washington would support Moscow’s military campaign in Syria and accept Mr. Assad.

While Russia was engaged in the cease-fire talks, U.S. officials say its war planes stepped up their attacks on positions held by moderate rebels. Russia maintains its airstrikes are targeting terrorist groups.

Mr. Kerry believes Monday’s agreement has “a viable chance of succeeding,” according to a senior administration official close to the secretary.

In contrast, Mr. Carter told senior officials Monday that it won’t hold. “He thinks it’s a ruse,” a senior administration official said.

Mr. Obama has an absolute right to reject the advice he gets from his national security team, as he did in 2012. He’s the Commander in Chief. Indeed he has an absolute right to dismiss these officials and find ones more attuned to his desire to do next to nothing in Syria, and attuned to Mr. Kerry’s view that endless palaver with Sergei Lavrov will solve Syria.

But there are two other things to consider. First, it does seem that Mr. Obama has no national security advisers and never did–not if by that term we mean people whose advice he values and sometimes takes. It seems that the pattern is simpler: they offer advice, he rejects it, and takes his own counsel. Constitutionally quite sound. In practice, we can now see after seven years, dangerous.

Second, what has been the real impact, in Syria, of Mr. Obama’s certitude about his own path? 350,000 dead, ten million refugees. And what has been the real substance of U.S. policy? Perhaps the best way to answer the question is by quoting Fred Hof, who was Mr. Obama’s Special Adviser for Syria until he resigned. Were a history of the Syria conflict written today, Hof said, it would have to contain these words:

“During all of the years of Assad regime mass terror, homicide, and collective punishment—practices supported by and participated in by its foreign enablers—the United States failed to protect a single Syrian inside Syria. It did not even try.”

This article originally appeared at the Council on Foreign Relations Blog.