Inaction inflamed
Obama’s lectures on Syria ring hollow
When future historians debate why the U.S. did so little to stop the tragedy in Syria, they should dig up the speech President Barack Obama just gave at a U.N. summit on refugees.
While Democrats signaled their collective virtue by denouncing a tweet from Donald Trump Jr. that compared Syrian refugees to Skittles, Mr. Obama lectured foreign ministers and heads of state last week on the same topic. “And just as failure to act in the past, for example, by turning away Jews fleeing Nazi Germany, is a stain on our collective conscience,” Mr. Obama said, “I believe history will judge us harshly if we do not rise to this moment.”
Mr. Obama went on to state something obvious: “We must recognize that refugees are a symptom of larger failures — be it war, ethnic tensions, or persecution.” But then he said something bizarre: “If we truly want to address the crisis, wars like the savagery in Syria must be brought to an end, and it will be brought to an end through political settlement and diplomacy, and not simply by bombing.”
This is a straw man. No one who’s argued for more U.S. involvement in Syria has said more bombing alone will solve these problems. What’s more, the U.S. is doing a lot of bombing in Syria against Islamic State.
But there is also something sinister about Mr. Obama’s formulation. The U.S. is not just another country when it comes to the collective security of the Middle East. Through its alliances and interventions, it has been the region’s reluctant sheriff since the end of World War II.
His administration’s pursuit of diplomacy and publicly stated policy to not attack Syrian forces gave Russia a green light to establish its forward air bases in Syria a year ago. As Secretary of State John Kerry pursued Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov to restart peace negotiations, the Russians deployed bombers and jets to Syria and struck a pact with Iran to regain territory for the dictator, Bashar Assad.
This toothless diplomacy has further immiserated the Syrian people. The U.S. government confirmed Tuesday that it was Russian aircraft that destroyed an aid convoy this week, halting the delivery of food and medicine to the besieged citizens of Aleppo, and killing 20 aid workers.
It’s worse than this though. This atrocity was committed during what was supposed to be a cessation of hostilities negotiated by Mr. Kerry and Mr. Lavrov this month in Geneva. The second phase of that agreement would have established a center in Jordan where Russian and U.S. military officers would share intelligence to target the Islamic State and other jihadis.
Think about that for a minute. Mr. Kerry negotiated a deal to collaborate with an air force that just bombed an aid convoy and has bombed hospitals and civilians now for a year. It’s true that last weekend, the U.S. bombed Syrian soldiers, killing 62. It apologized for that mistake. The Russians at the time demanded the U.N. censure the U.S. Last week Mr. Lavrov ridiculously urged the U.N. to gather all the facts about the bombing of the aid convoy.
Mr. Kerry has mustered outrage at all of this. On Wednesday he told a U.N. meeting on Syria: “This is a moment of truth ... for President Putin and Russia; it’s a moment of truth also for the opposition; and it’s a moment of truth for the people who support the opposition.”
This also a moment of truth for Mr. Obama and the Democrats who support him. Mr. Kerry is reduced to chasing his Russian counterpart around the world to beg for ceasefires and negotiations because Mr. Obama never tried to deter Russia’s intervention a year ago. As a result, there is no real chance to establish the no-fly zone that people like Mr. Kerry lobbied for in 2014 and 2015 behind the scenes, and that Hillary Clinton calls for publicly today. That’s a policy that would have saved lives and pressured Assad to negotiate an end to the war.
The tragedy in Syria is primarily the fault of Assad. But Mr. Obama’s failure to challenge Assad and his Russian and Iranian supporters has extended the war. It’s easy to tweet the truism that these refugees are people, not Skittles. It’s much harder to come to terms with the role Mr. Obama’s inaction has played in upending Syrian lives.