An unprecedented number of current State Department officials have endorsed an internal memo that harshly judges President Obama’s Syria policy and calls on the U.S. to attack directly the regime of Bashar Assad.
The memo, according to a report Thursday night in the New York Times, was filed as part of a regular Department feature called the “dissent channel” that lets officials express disagreement with public policy.
The Times reported that the memo, which it obtained, says American policy in the five-year multi-party civil war has been “overwhelmed” by Assad regime cease-fire violations and unrelenting brutality.
The memo 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 Times reported. Such a move would change drastically Obama administration policy, which has emphasized strikes on Islamic State forces fighting both Mr. Assad, and rebel groups that also reject Sunni Islamism.
The 51 signees are mostly career diplomats and people with experience in Middle Eastern affairs although none are high-profile public figures, the Times reported. While dissent memos are not unusual — the channel dates back to the Vietnam War era — the Times said this many signees is “extremely large, if not unprecedented.”
It would also radically change U.S. posture on a high-profile issue where President Obama once drew a “red line” on the use of chemical weapons and said Mr. Assad had to go, only to back off. In recent years, the U.S. has tried to help negotiate cease-fires involving the Assad regime, while Russia has intervened directly on his behalf.
The diplomats acknowledge that involving U.S. forces against the Assad regime thus risks confrontations with Russia, but said they are not “advocating for a slippery slope that ends in a military confrontation with Russia,” but for U.S. actions sufficiently strong to rein in the Assad regime and force it to come to the negotiating table with serious intent.
• Victor Morton can be reached at vmorton@washingtontimes.com.
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