Mounting pressure unlikely to sway Obama on Syria

Washington / AFP

Exasperated US diplomats are in open revolt over Barack Obama’s Syria policy, but radical change is unlikely in the twilight of his presidency.
More than 280,000 people have been killed. Millions more have fled their homes.
A relentless drumbeat of cluster bombs, barrel bombs, chemical bombs, murder, rape and torture has turned swaths of Syria to dust.
Humanitarian aid sometimes drips into the beleaguered cities, but when it does, President Bashar Al Assad’s regime makes sure “punishment” bombings quickly follow.
“The Assad regime’s actions defy all definitions of human decency,” said one US official.
There are ominous signs the regime is moving to strangle food production.
In Syria, “you think you’ve reached the bottom and then you hear a faint scratching from below,” another official said.
Through it all, the Obama administration has insisted only Assad—and his Russian and Iranian sponsors—can end the madness.
But privately, even senior diplomats admit that their inability to stop five years of butchery has challenged their conscience. They say that whatever comes next, Syria will have left an indelible stain on their years in public service.
In a deliberately leaked memo, 51 serving US diplomats have now said “enough,” insisting that Obama has a moral obligation to stop the carnage.
To force Assad into real peace negotiations, they say the 44th president must launch airstrikes against the Syrian regime.
Such a policy, they argue, could increase the cost of Assad’s intransigence and perhaps stem the suffering.
The White House has quickly signaled it is not ready to embark on such a 180 degree shift.
“The president has always been clear that he does not see a military solution to the crisis in Syria and that remains the case,” White House spokeswoman Jennifer Friedman said in response to the memo.
The White House has stuck fast to a credo—borne from the folly of the Iraq war—that the United States should not, indeed cannot, solve all the world’s crises.
Above all Obama has tried to avoid entanglements in the Middle East, defining US interests in Syria as part of a counterterrorism effort to dismantle the IS group.
That has left his Secretary of State John Kerry with an unenviable—and probably impossible—task of negotiating an end to the broader crisis with little or no leverage.
His counterparts in Moscow or Damascus know Obama’s reticence well, and have the upper hand on the ground, so see little incentive to deal.