by Elliott Abrams
"When the history of
the Obama administration is written, there will be a long and damaging
chapter on its immense humanitarian and strategic failure in Syria. With
three years of [U.S. President Barack] Obama yet to come, we have not
even seen the full humanitarian disaster play out -- nor have we yet
confronted the dangers that are arising there from the vast jihadist
presence."
That is how my article in
the newest issue of The Weekly Standard begins. In it, I trace the sad
story of Obama policy toward Syria, where American strategic and
humanitarian interests met -- yet the administration still did nothing
to advance them. Or perhaps one must say the president himself did
nothing, for most of his top cabinet advisers urged stronger action:
former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former Defense Secretary
Robert Gates, former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, and Secretary of
State John Kerry. But the president rejected the advice, and we now see
something like 200,000 dead, a regime that used chemical weapons but
that we have given up trying to remove or punish, 6 million people
displaced and homeless, and the gathering presence of 10,000 jihadis at
the center of the Middle East.
In establishing his
"Atrocities Prevention Board" in 2012, the president said: "Awareness
without action changes nothing. ... 'Never again' is a challenge to
nations. It's a bitter truth -- too often, the world has failed to
prevent the killing of innocents on a massive scale. And we are haunted
by the atrocities that we did not stop and the lives we did not save."
The article notes that "as the year ended, Obama was golfing in Hawaii; evidence that he was haunted is difficult to come by."
As the article
concludes, the president "is presiding over a humanitarian disaster
where war crimes and atrocities occur each day and he responds with
speeches. He is conceding a strategic victory to Iran and Hezbollah, who
have decided to win in Syria and have rejected the administration line
that 'there is no military solution.' He has weakened our own alliances,
for example dragging British Prime Minister David Cameron into a
dispiriting defeat in the House of Commons when he rushed to join a
military strike that Obama soon abandoned. He is endangering our safety
by allowing jihadists to turn Syria into their world center of activity.
And over the next three years, he is likely to reap what he has sowed.
The problem is, so will we."
From "Pressure Points" by Elliott Abrams. Reprinted with permission from the Council on Foreign Relations.
Elliott Abrams is a senior fellow for Middle East Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=6947
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
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