POLITICS_ Obama ignored all his advisers on Syria – and he isn't going to change his mind

Obama ignored all his advisers on Syria – and he isn't going to change his mind
By David Blair - US politics -  Last updated: May 15th, 2013
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"All the options are horrible" for Obama on Syria. (Photo: Reuters)


There’s a remarkable piece in the New Yorker about how President Obama is grappling with his wrenching dilemma over what to do about Syria. It’s one of those examples of American journalism that gives you a genuine feel for the atmosphere behind the scenes – and of how, in the words of one former US official, “all the options are horrible”.

That set me thinking about an incident that has been widely reported, but whose true significance might not have been fully appreciated. Last year, the entire US national security team came up with a unanimous recommendation. These people very rarely agree with one another, but they all told Obama that the time had come for America to arm the Syrian rebels. The degree of consensus was remarkable: Leon Panetta, then defence secretary, Hillary Clinton, then secretary of state, General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the joint chiefs, and General David Petraeus, then head of the CIA, all advised Obama to tip the balance of the war by sending weapons to carefully vetted units within Syria’s insurgency. And the President turned them down.

“There may be another time in history when a President’s entire national security team recommended a course of action and he overruled them, but if there is I’m not aware of it,” says Senator John McCain in the New Yorker.

That episode surely reveals Obama’s visceral reluctance to intervene in Syria. His famously professorial intellect is clearly convinced that direct intervention would do more harm than good – and the risks of arming the rebels would outweigh any possible reward.

Given that he rejected the unanimous recommendation of his advisers once, I suspect that Obama is not going to change his mind. Unless Bashar al-Assad commits some unspeakable atrocity – like gassing an entire town as Saddam Hussein did in Halabja in 1988 – Obama will keep America out of this conflict. And who can blame him? Staying out is just as much of a moral choice as intervening. But there may be wisdom in Obama’s restraint.

One other thought: John McCain’s passionate advocacy of intervention in Syria shows how American foreign policy would have been profoundly different had he defeated Obama in 2008. Historians often debate the true significance of presidents. Would a vital decision really have gone the other way if X rather than Y had been in the White House? Well, we can safely say that if McCain had been elected, America would now be at war again in the Middle East.

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Tags: Barack Obama, John McCain, Syria, USA



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