Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. I’m rather relieved that he seems to rule it out. You need leadership up and down the chain of command and we fail at the highest levels.
There is no good outcome possible in Syria.
There’s always the preferred outcome. The ambiguity shouldn’t be at the expense of US souls however.
That’s why we will be there full on by 2014. Almost guaranteed.
“I’m rather relieved that he seems to rule it out”
Problem is, you have to know he’s supplying US enemies with US arms.
There is no National interest in our being in Syria either.
Fact is, the two warring sides are not friendly to the United States of America, period. Why in the world would we intervene when our enemies are killing each other off?
Far as I'm concerned, let 'em all kill each other. Best outcome there could be.
Assad will probably totter on for a year or two, but the idea that Syria even still exists as a nation is probably on thin ice. Syria’s turning into the next Lebanon. And the many factions are and have been supplied by the Gulf States, Saudi Arabia, and of course Russia and Iran. The Russians and Iranians backed Assad to the hilt when he could have simmered everything down with a propagand campaign and some parade-ground army tactics. Instead, he went right to the Pinata Page of his father’s manual on dictatorship.
Iranian thugs have been training Syrian and foreign thugs to establish an Iran-style mullahcracy while pretending they’re there to help prop up Assad. They may have gone there for that reason, but Assad’s grip broke quickly, because all of his army is made up of conscripts (everyone has to begin service in the armed forces starting age 18) and most of it was Sunni.
So, there’s little reason to believe that US troops will be deployed in Syria. Besides the existing stream of tents, food, and medical supplies, US training of the withered secular core of the FSA in Jordan is the extent of US involvement and likely to remain so.