Back when all this began, when the Bush administration decided that the Shiite power they had unleashed by invading Iraq was a bigger threat to American interests in the Middle East than the Sunni-led insurgency they were facing in Mesopotamia, a cast of characters arose to question the administration. When Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware got word that we were sending commandos into Iran to pursue insurgents, he asked Condoleeza Rice for assurances.
At Rice’s Senate appearance in January [2007], Democratic Senator Joseph Biden, of Delaware, pointedly asked her whether the U.S. planned to cross the Iranian or the Syrian border in the course of a pursuit. “Obviously, the President isn’t going to rule anything out to protect our troops, but the plan is to take down these networks in Iraq,” Rice said, adding, “I do think that everyone will understand that—the American people and I assume the Congress expect the President to do what is necessary to protect our forces.”
That answer displeased Republican Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska.
“Some of us remember 1970, Madam Secretary. And that was Cambodia. And when our government lied to the American people and said, “We didn’t cross the border going into Cambodia,” in fact we did.
“I happen to know something about that, as do some on this committee. So, Madam Secretary, when you set in motion the kind of policy that the President is talking about here, it’s very, very dangerous.
When the administration began making noises about Iran developing nuclear technology, Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York had a cautionary word.
Many in Congress have greeted the claims about Iran with wariness; in the Senate on February 14th, Hillary Clinton said, “We have all learned lessons from the conflict in Iraq, and we have to apply those lessons to any allegations that are being raised about Iran. Because, Mr. President, what we are hearing has too familiar a ring and we must be on guard that we never again make decisions on the basis of intelligence that turns out to be faulty.”
According to Seymour Hersh’s reporting at the time (which, in retrospect, seems to have been more than a little alarmist), the Saudis, Israelis, and the Bush administration agreed to a four-point plan to counteract Iran’s influence. The fourth element of the plan is the most pertinent here.
Fourth, the Saudi government, with Washington’s approval, would provide funds and logistical aid to weaken the government of President Bashir Assad, of Syria. The Israelis believe that putting such pressure on the Assad government will make it more conciliatory and open to negotiations. Syria is a major conduit of arms to Hezbollah.
In 2011, after the WikiLeaks disclosures, the U.S. was forced to admit that it had been funding anti-Assad regime efforts, too, going back to 2006.
When Barack Obama became president, he inherited this neo-conservative policy which was based in very sectarian thinking: Sunnis good, Shiites bad. The people who had been speaking against and raising questions about the policy would become high-ranking members of his cabinet. But Obama proved repeatedly that he wasn’t going to accept the dissenters’ advice either. He doesn’t seem to have accepted any part of the paradigm.
Bradley Klapper may think that the administration’s Syria policy is in disarray, but his own timeline of events proves otherwise. While Obama did not pull up every anti-regime effort in the pipeline root and branch, he made clear upon taking office that he wanted to pursue improved relations with Syria and coax them out of their alliance with Iran and Hizbollah with a variety of diplomatic and economic incentives. He assigned an ambassador to Damascus for the first time in years. At this point, any ongoing mischief was either going on at the direction of Prince Bandar in Saudi Arabia or was intended to gently prod Assad toward the West.
The effort was not successful, and it was undercut by the Arab Spring. When Assad responded to protests with brutality, the administration tried to pursue sanctions at the United Nations but was rebuffed by the Chinese and the Russians. Eventually, Obama said that Assad needed to leave power, but his next step was to have Secretary of State Clinton work with the Russians on finding a way to end the civil war. The Russians wouldn’t agree that Assad had to go, but it was implied by the fact that the Assad regime was given a veto over any possible future government. In other words, they wouldn’t agree to go unless they felt that they and the Alawites would be protected. Obama went along with this, but it didn’t lead anywhere.
As the civil war grew worse, Obama refused to send weapons. But, in August 2012, he grew worried enough about the potential use of chemical weapons that he issued his now-famous “red line” warning against their use. By February 2013, we were sending medical kits and MRE’s, but still no weapons, and Obama refused to create a no-fly zone despite considerable pressure to do so.
Then, in June, our intelligence community concluded that the regime had probably used some chemical weapons in a few scattered attacks. Again, he was pressured to create a no-fly zone, but he settled on the lesser alternative of finally acceding to sending lethal aid to the rebels. But none of it was sent.
The lesson on the eve of the 8/21 attacks was clear. Despite inheriting a policy that saw the Middle East as a battle between Sunnis and Shiites, the president was using every stalling tactic he could think of to avoid joining the fight on the Sunni’s side. First, he tried diplomacy. Then he tried sanctions. Then he issued a warning. Then he allowed non-lethal aid. Then he offered lethal aid. At every point, he did less than what he was being asked to by the neo-cons, the Israelis, and the Sunni powers. In many cases, he was doing less than his own cabinet advised.
Then, when the 8/21 attacks occurred, he threatened to use a limited amount of force and sandbagged even that effort by giving up his right to act unilaterally and throwing the rotting mess to Congress. Finally, he struck an agreement with Russia that will take the pressure off to use military strikes so long as Syria is complying with the terms of disarmament.
His policy has been to reject the view that American interests are tied up in a regional sectarian war in which we want to see the Sunnis prevail. His policy has been to resist constant and powerful forces that keep insisting that we accept the paradigm the neo-cons set in motion back in 2006-7. His policy has been to keep us out of Syria, no matter the political cost to himself, his reelection efforts, or his posterity.
At the same time, his policy has been consistently that there is no military solution to Syria. The Sunnis cannot prevail there and we wouldn’t want them to anyway considering what they would do to the religious minorities. He tried to coax Syria out of the Shiite paradigm. Then he tried to get Russia to help him kill the sectarian paradigm. And now he has Russia on board to see this through to an end that isn’t settled by one sect prevailing against the other.
He has never seen Syria as a proxy war against Iran or Russia or as a war that we need settled in the Sunni’s favor.
His policy is not in disarray. It’s actually on its first solid footing since his presidency began.
Some of your finest work, and I’ve been coming around for a long time.
Agreed but still a welcome surprise!
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Reposting my comment of Sept. 5, 2013. I see the appointment of Susan Rice as PBO’s National Security adviser as undercutting Secretary Kerry’s diplomatic effort as I have diaried – Rice and Kerry: War Inside the White House. Obama appreciates opposing views in his team, but this has led to confusion in policy as he is seen on speaking on two tracks of policy. Perhaps this leads to perception of indecisiveness. However, PBO’s courageous decision in recent days breaks with 35 years of blind support for Saudi Arabia and Israel.
I agree, but I want to reiterate that it is dangerous for an American President to cross the permanent government. Expect him to take fire for this.
Hard to find the words to applaud your succinct analysis. The piece travels through the history and backstories to make sense of what I’ve been too blindly ignorant to see. Thank you.
Because?
Why do so many dismiss the importance of Hezbollah to the security of Syria? Has the dreadful civil war in Lebanon been forgotten so soon? And the more recent Israeli attack on Lebanon in 2006?
What exactly does Syria and the Assad regime gain by throwing Hezbollah under the bus, cut ties with Iran, and align itself with KSA? A staging ground for a retaking of Iraq and a take-down of Iran? And the Assad regime would be left standing in that scenario?
When the principle goals remain the destruction of Hezbollah and regime change in Iran, the shift was nothing more than a tactical revision. One that Assad’s team likely read very easily.
derp.
Were those US warships off Syria’s coast while Obama and Kerry beat the drums for bombing Syria just a mirage?
He’s running for reelection?
Do covert actions in foreign countries not count as being engaged? Perhaps you should tell Jeremy Scahill that he’s deluded.
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Cherish this moment @BooMan. There have been other times …
○ Profound Thinking June 14, 2013
○ No Solution for Syria May 17, 2013
○ Syria Is Not Iraq July 27, 2012
○ Declare the War on Terror Over June 6, 2012
I’m very pleased with Secretary Kerry’s diplomacy.
Why do you keep repeating this assertion as fact?
UN Team Finds No Proof of Chemical Weapons:
This report covered the period from May 15 through July 15, 2013.
In the prior period, U.N.’s Carla del Ponte says Syrian rebels may have used sarin
You have proof for this:
Weapons were being sent — covertly. How do you think the opposition was able to shoot their way into several locations and defeat Syrian forces? They just were as big and powerful as the opposition wanted. Perhaps those “guns” without US identification were what the CIA Benghazi mission was attempting to assemble and ship. The forced abandonment of that mission does fit within the timeline of when things began to slow down for the opposition. But we won’t know if that is only coincidental or a component in arming the insurgents for a few decades.
Don’t be willfully stupid:
What I repeat as a fact is in fact a fact.
Also, too, you know full well that the president isn’t facing reelection, but that he was when he got the initial warnings on CW and decided to do no more than issue a red line warning.
Thanks for this , Boo, one of your best. It’s extremely informative and puts crucial matters in fuller perspective. I hope it gets all over the blogosphere.
definetelly, no military solution to Syria is the best solution! as the author said that Obama policy is not in disarray!!! he is soo true!
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anunturi braila
And now our Reich-Wingers will say, “AHA! We TOLD you Obama was a Muslim! And now we know what kind – he’s a Shiite!!!!!”
Kudo’s to President Obama for NOT getting us involved in Syria!
And while Obama’s neither a Jedi 11 Dimensional Chess Master, nor an inept Chinese Checkers player, I’ll take his brand of diplomacy as President ahead of almost anyone we’ve had recently – with, maybe, Clinton as the other one.
The sociopathic Dastardly Dick of Death, Cheney, and his illiterate meat-puppet, W, would already have bombed Syracuse, and prepared for the invasion of Sri Lanka – but not the occupation.
And the people of Saskatchewan would be nervous, too – as well as would the folks in Saratoga, Somalia, and every other place starting with an “S.”
So far, Obama has managed to not get us militarily involved in yet another country in the Middle East.
And for that, I thank him.
Until you got to this paragraph:
… you were making an arguable case if we take arguable to mean “one-sided but accounting reasonably well for all the known data”. You may be right that Obama had no desire at all to get involved militarily in Syria — if he did want to get involved he had plenty of chances to do so but did not.
But it looked to me like after 8/21 Obama decided to scrap his doubts and go all in. It’s hard to claim that he wasn’t really going to order the missile strikes when he kept repeating that that’s exactly what he was going to do. At that point he seems to have realized that there was no way to pirouette out of the mess, no way to go back so instead he decided to go forward in partnership with what you call the “constant and powerful forces that keep insisting that we accept the paradigm the neo-cons set in motion back in 2006-7” and what someone else in the comments called “the permanent government”. You have argued eloquently that it would have been a disastrous mistake. No matter: he was ready to do it.
Then the British Parliament threw him under the bus: unheard-of effrontery from our loyal junior partners.
He dumped the “whole rotting mess” on Congress with the expectation that the Republicans who had been calling so loudly and so long for a war would back him up. This is not a democracy we’re living in here: politicians don’t ever allow for a vote that they don’t expect to win. But the Republicans threw him under the bus too! And the public never wanted the war in the first place.
You’re trying to persuade us that Obama didn’t have his finger on the red button at this point. And I’m finding that hard to buy. If I’m willing to define “arguable case” as “one-sided but accounting reasonably well for all the known data” then it seems we have here an arguable case for calling this a policy in disarray.
Putin saved his ass. And for that we can all be thankful.
I’m even willing to agree with your conclusion:
… except for one thing: it’s only on a solid footing provided he does not entertain the idea of getting involved militarily in Syria. Ever. At all. Under that assumption Obama, and the US public more broadly, have ducked a bullet. It’s the “permanent government” that lost this round. But they’re permanent. They’ll be back for another round.
You are being argumentative (in the logical sense) when you say that no one ever asks for a vote that they expect to lose. If someone can best accomplish their goals by asking for a vote that they expect to lose, then they will do it. Senators do it all the time.
Using that kind of blinkered logic, I could just as easily argue that presidents never ask for a vote if they don’t need one. Except, Obama did need one. He needed either approval or rejection.
Now, ask yourself one more question. Why would Putin rescue the president at the very moment that it looked like he was about to lose in Congress? Why not just let that happen? Could it be, perhaps, that Obama and Putin were working together with a little more cleverness than you’re willing to give them credit for? Doesn’t that do a better job of explaining the known facts than the idea that Putin believed that Obama would attack anyway, without any authority and in defiance of his own people, Congress, the British parliament, NATO, and the United Nations?
Well, if commanders-in-chief are doing it too, it sets a new standard for recklessness. You’re trying to convince us that the policy is not in disarray, remember? Senators do all kinds of horseshit all the time, in fact these days they live for that stuff and little else. Senators aren’t a standard for comparison. Of anything, really.
Either Obama expected to win the Congressional vote, or he expected to lose it. Are you really trying to convince us that he expected to lose and, like Cameron, say “Oh dash it all, the whole attack is just off, so sorry about all the drama and buildup”? Or did he expect to lose and then still, in the wake of all his “representative democracy” statements, push the red button anyhow? Doesn’t that leave you with the conclusion that he expected to win?
This would be more persuasive if he had asked for the vote from the Congress before he lost the vote in Parliament. Because up to that point he wasn’t asking anyone for approval or rejection: after Aug. 21 he was going full-tilt-boogie ahead.
As for Putin: Putin would prefer to prevent an attack on Syria and he would much prefer to be the kingmaker for the new regime when Assad finally goes down than allow Assad’s opponents to win. If the US attacks: chaos, instability, and an uncertain situation. If the US does not attack: the uncertainty is postponed.
If Obama loses, he might attack, if not sooner then later: remember the “permanent government” had managed to box out all his other options. If Putin tosses Obama a life preserver he won’t attack. Better for Putin to play the long game here. Speculation on my part? Of course — but you don’t need to use collusion between Obama and Putin (as you are) to explain Putin’s behavior, you can explain it with independent self-interest.
Just as an aside: I think it strains credulity to claim that the Syria policy was not in disarray after Aug. 21. I can buy an argument that on domestic policy Obama plays 11-dimensional chess with Congress and the Republicans because they are all dumber than a bag of hair: it could be possible to be smart enough to see 3-4 moves ahead of them and tie them in knots. But in international policy you have to play against people who are quite smart themselves and fully capable of realizing the limitations of US power in a way that the US public (to say nothing of the US political leadership/elite and the “permanent government”) is nowhere near grasping. So w/r/t Syria, it looks like it all came apart on Aug. 21, the unthinkable became thinkable and they were improvising like mad. So what? Give props to Obama for being a good improviser if that’s what it was. We live and breathe for another day.
Begin with the fact that what Obama was proposing was the least violent viable option on his plate. Normally, in a situation like that, you make a bigger threat than you are prepared to carry out and that allows you to back down and still call it a win.
Then, accept the fact that 1) there were preexisting conversations with the Russians, going back a year at least, about disarming the regime of chemical weapons, and 2) that as soon as the attacks happened on Aug. 21, the diplomacy was ramped up between the U.S. and Russia, with the preexisting talks as the only possible avenue of finding common ground.
I’m willing to grant the probability that Obama sought the UK’s authorization and was surprised not to get it, but that was part of getting leverage. When he didn’t get it, he threw it to Congress where I don’t think he expected to get a positive outcome. And, in any case, it allowed him to stall for time and see if the Russians would offer him an offramp.
Either way, though, whether he wanted authorization or not, it was not his desire to actually do what he was threatening to do. And that is what laying out the history allows you to see more clearly. The pattern is obvious. Even the statements I quoted in the comments of this thread back up what I’ve been saying.
Oops. I mean the comments in the new thread.
I’ll grant you that it was the least violent option but you yourself were arguing eloquently that it was not viable in the least. Now you’re claiming that it was viable?
If you want to be persuasive on this you’ll have to offer some kind of argument why you think he put it up to a vote with the expectation that he would lose. It still seems to me — as I tried to argue above — that winning would put him in a bad situation (carrying out a threat that, I agree, he never wanted to own in the first place) but losing would put him in a worse one (looking like David Cameron, backing down — or pushing the red button anyhow).
We know that if Obama lost the vote and launched the missiles anyhow that the missiles would change very little but he would end up losing a lot of credibility.
Say Obama lost the vote and did nothing: where is he when either one side or the other launches the next chemical attack? Once again I’m back at the same conclusion: Obama had to think he’d win the vote, that he was safe from the downside consequences of losing, because those were big consequences.
Something about the phrase “see if the Russians would offer him an offramp” leaps out at me from the last sentence. If this is not improvisation then what exactly is it?
I agree: it was not his desire to get involved in the Syrian conflict militarily. He didn’t desire to get into that mess two years ago and he doesn’t desire to get into it now. I’m just going off of what we all saw: desire aside, he was willing to get involved in a big way.
Look, here’s what I don’t understand. What is the problem for the left in admitting one or more of the following:
— the Syria policy was “overtaken by events” (a fancy phrase that means the same as “disarray”)
— Obama was improvising (even “improvising madly”)
— Obama got lucky: Putin saved his ass
The rule with luck is this: luck happens to people who prepare for it. President McCain or President Romney or President Lindsay Graham would have made a total and irrevocable mess of all of this because to the extent they prepare at all they only prepare for failure (and it may have a lot to do with their view on proxy wars as you argue in the other post). Obama doesn’t have to be perfect, he doesn’t have to be “great”, he just has to prepare well enough to do a good enough job that’s better than anyone else could have done and he met that standard here. He led us in dodging a bullet.
Luck is permissible. Improvisation is permissible. Disarray is permissible. Judge it all by the results because in the end, it’s only the results that matter. We live and breathe another day and so do a lot of Syrians. Why do we have to make any higher claim than that?
It’s not necessary to conclude that he wanted to lose the vote in Congress, only that he had decided he needed either for Congress to approve the matter to preserve his options or to disapprove the matter and give him an excuse for inaction. Personally, I don’t think he thought he would win, but it doesn’t really matter because he never intended to carry out the strikes unless he had approval and he couldn’t persuade the Russians to go along with disarmament.
VidaLoca…brilliant commentary. Thanks again.
You seem to be new here…maybe you’ve been lurking, maybe not. Either way, I just want to tell you that Booman apparently will not be moved from his position of almost knee-jerk support for the Obama administration. I really do not know the reasons for this…he seems to be quite intelligent in many other aspects of his opinions…but in this one? No way.
He has mentioned here that he is a “consultant” for some part of the Democratic Party. He has also mentioned that he is in the same sort of financial difficulties as are most of the rest of the U.S. population that still possesses at least the partial remnants of a conscience.
Gotta eat…
Me too.
So it goes.
Welcome in.
Later…
AG
P.S. That “Permanent Government” thing…also known as the PermaGov…is mine. I firmly believe that no politician has any chance whatsoever of ascending to real national power in the U.S. without the cooperation of what Ron Paul so accurately calls “the Government Media Complex,” and that any politician who does reach that level has made promises…tacitly and/or not so tacitly…the he or she will not upset the corporate/military/intelligence apple cart that has run the joint since before Dwight Eisenhower tried to warn us of “the military-industrial complex” in his farewell speech. That complex has only gotten more complex in the ensuing years, and we are now living in what might be quite accurately called a form of technological dictatorship. The media dictate who gets elected and who doesn’t, and said media are owned and controlled by vast corporate powers including the intelligence establishment. (Look up “Operation Mockingbird” for more on that idea if you are not familiar with the history of intelligence influence on the media.)
Obama? He’s smarter than Bush II, that’s for sure. Snarter than Cheney, too. Is he, as Dr. Adolph Reed Jr. described him in 1996, “a smooth Harvard lawyer with impeccable credentials and vacuous-to-repressive neoliberal politics?” He most certainly was that at the time, but now? Now he has grown enormously. Has it been a “good” growth? Ask his victims and then ask those who have in some way profited from his actions…including quite possibly each and every one of us living in the U.S. Damned if I know. I do know this, though…he is now a lame duck president, and as such he is going to have less and less say in the country’s direction.
Who’s next?
We shall see.
One thing is fairly certain, though…his successor (DemRat or RatPub) will have made the same applecart promises to the PermaGov. Bet on it.
Exceptional piece of work, Booman. I think that firm footing comes from finally having the Foreign Policy team he wants. Clinton was a hard worker but she never really agreed with the President’s policies. Glad to see her gone.
It would be helpful at some point if someone said exactly what our Syria policy is and what its national interest objectives are. The President might not be confused; his policy might not be confused. But the public, although relieved, is confused.
And analysts like Juan Cole are beginning to paint a new bipolar struggle — this time between US-NATO and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization countries. If the US policy is not confused and if the Lavrov-Kerry Accord fits squarely within that policy, it seems that the President and the Secretary of State might not be trapped in that bipolar thinking, but the who’s up-who’s down mentality of the foreign policy and national security establishment must not be seeing this as a great victory. That would indicate differences between the Administration’s understanding and that of the folks who must advise the President and implement policy.
The danger of this moment in the process of withdrawal from Afghanistan is the US foreign policy and national security establishment looking for a new enemy in order to preserve their bloated budgets. The key to stability in Afghanistan and Pakistan is non-interference by frontline states, and that agreement that allows that to happen was concluded in 2010 in Istanbul in a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which with its observers includes all of the frontline states. Seeing the result in Syria as a zero-sum situation in a bipolar world threatens the ability of the US to completely withdraw from Afghanistan because of the US national security players who are still playing the Great Game.
It is not time to get carried away with US smarts in what happened. Too many domestic political forces within and outside the administration still see it as weakness and too many non-NATO (and some NATO) allies have their own agendas that do not necessarily align with that of US national interest. We follow them blindly at our peril.
As US power has receded as a result of over-extension and economic stupidity, alliances to check US dominance and to promote the interests of the countries involved have emerged. China and Russia now coordinate through the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and meeting of the BRICS countries that include India, Brazil, and South Africa. The effectiveness of a regional collective security arrangements in reducing internal conflict has long been demonstrated with NATO. The same possibility exists with SCO, UNASUR, and the African Union. What will prevent inter-region conflict is having fuzzy boundaries on the regions. This is already happening. Russia is an observer at NATO meetings as well as a member of the SCO. NATO has programmatic relationships with members of the AU and UNASUR and the SCO.
In principle, that Arab League is the regional collective security body for the Maghreb, Levant, and Arabian Peninsula. It cannot be effective as long as the Israel/Palestine issue is the predominant security issue in the region and the alliance is organized on ethnic lines. Regional collective security is much more likely if Israel and Iran both have some relation to the Arab League. Note that all of the Maghreb countries are also members of the African Union, which provides the necessary fuzziness of boundaries betwen the blocs.
That is one possibility for the emerging international system. The other one is the dominance of trade blocs. BRICS is an emerging trading bloc with increasing collective relationships among the five countries and some degree of diplomatic coordination. The US is trying to put together a Trans-Pacific Partnership and a Trans-Atlantic Agreement, likely to compete with the BRICS area although the exact intention of those agreements has never been publicly stated. “Free trade” is not what they are about. The disturbing part about the US initiatives is allowing transnational corporations to take countries to court to strip their environmental, regulatory, labor relations, and other laws as “non-tariff restraints on trade” completely overriding the legislative actions of those countries.
Syria policy fits within the context of all these larger movements going on. It does not stand by itself.
Yet the Administration is still pumping the public with the imagery of the “world’s only superpower” and American exceptionalism. That is a dangerous framework to maintain even for domestic political reasons. And it creates cognitive dissonance between the public statements of policy and the actual actions of the administration.
At some point the American delusions about the rest of the world and its place in it need to be corrected. I doubt that that issue can be dribbled until 2017 and the next administration.
The other shoe.
M K Bhadrakumar, Asian Times: Putin eyes Obama’s Iran file
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Yes, I too love the story why Putin’s visit with Rouhani in Teheran was cancelled.
It’s true Step 3 will be on the table as the politial solution on Syria get some traction. The Obama/Kerry duo have openened a backchannel with Rouhani. We’ll see next week when the world leaders come to New York for the UN General Assembly. Will there be the same anti-Iran demonstrations by the AIPAC crowd as last year? Perhaps Obama and Rouhani will cross paths in a UN corridor. I’m glad Obama got lucky one Saturday and got his thoughts straight on ME after a walk in the WH gardens with Dennis McDonough. From the brink of war and a failed presidency.
Excellent analysis. As if from the shores of Lake Wobegon, ‘where all the thoughts are above average’. 🙂
Man those sunglasses, boys and girls, the Light is bursting forth. It must be the right time. Over at moonofalabama, Bernhard, ‘b’, has posted what is being praised as being among his best about Syria, A Short History Of The War On Syria – 2006-2014
As far as Obama is concerned, just remember, he only plays it by the book…..SUN TZU ON THE ART OF WAR