OPINION:
Fifty-one career diplomats have signed a protest to the Secretary of State and President Obama condemning U.S. policy, or lack of a good one, in Syria. Their point, that the United States should do everything it can to unseat the barbarous regime of Bashar Assad, is well taken — everywhere but at the White House.
The al-Assad regime is responsible for 400,000 deaths, and counting, by weapons of war, including bombing. The barbarism of the regime is unparalleled save perhaps that of al-Assad’s father, the former Syrian dictator. Left all but undisturbed, the regime is regaining lost territory and taking a stronger line against a negotiated settlement of the war, as proposed by the United States and its allies.
The protest, well meant as it is, is not as clear-cut in purpose as it might appear. Diplomats are civil servants whose duty lies in implementing policies in which they have a participatory contribution, and one that demands public loyalty to the administration they serve. Diplomats who cannot and will not abide by what they regard as bad policy, have only one available remedy: either keep still and work against the policies within the State Department, or resign with a public explanation of why they cannot any longer serve the diplomat-in-chief. The U.S. ambassador to Syria, Robert Ford, a career diplomat, did exactly that in May 2014. He had been withdrawn from Syria as a U.S. protest in February 2012 as the civil war escalated, and remained ambassador until 2014, but with an active campaign on against the regime on social media.
The letter of protest of the 51 diplomats, leaked to The New York Times with a burst of publicity, places the blame for the current state of affairs in Syria solely on the al-Assad regime. If a democratic alternative to the regime ever existed in sufficient numbers and influence to make a difference, it was wiped out by the reluctance of Barack Obama to do more than talk big. The opponents of the regime now consist only of radical Islamic terrorists supported by the two principal enemies of the United States, al Qaeda and the Islamic State, sometimes called ISIS or ISIL.
The final outcome of the civil war in Syria, with growing Russian dominance and participation by Arab regimes, appears likely to end in international negotiation between the bad guys and the not quite-as-bad guys. From the U.S. standpoint, absolutely essential to such a settlement is the disarming and destruction of the regime’s radical Islamic enemies. That appears to have the support, at least now, by the Russians and certain Western allies, led by the French who have long had an influence in Syria and who have strongly urged a more aggressive assistance from Mr. Obama’s government.
Mr. Obama has made passive resistance to threats against U.S. national security the sine qua non of its foreign policy. Whether he has actually recognized what’s what in the tangled Syrian environment is another question entirely. President Obama’s reluctance to intervene after his brave threats about what would happen to anyone who crossed his “red line” in Syria, and his earlier abandoning the American commitment to Iraq, have reduced the United States to little more than a spectator in the region. The 51 diplomats are right to be concerned, but they should think again about how to express those concerns.
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