President Obama has spent the last year and a half doing as little as possible to get involved in Syria. From helping refugees to aiding the “moderate rebels” he allegedly backs, his policy has been passive at best. Now that Russia is fully backing its horse in the race, the hundreds of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of man-hours that the administration has invested in coaxing revolution Syria is all but lost in less than two weeks.
Perhaps the most telling aspect of the situation is that America’s hand in the region has been so subtle that officials have to be careful not to reveal the classified information that everyone already knows. Politicians can’t even officially acknowledge that they’ve been assisting the rebels. They can only point to the areas that Russia has been attacking and tiptoe around the fact that they’re demolishing those were are unofficially supporting.
In other words, there’s really nothing we can do since Russia hasn’t attacked any assets that are officially receiving support.
Officials: CIA-backed Syrian rebels under Russian blitz http://t.co/JWIAauLTsf
Presidential weakness not seen in America since Carter.
— Connor Q Livingston (@cqlivingston) October 11, 2015
This administration is not the first to get bitten for playing in the shadows. Throughout recent history, America has unofficially supported regimes and regime changers. We’ve supported some coups and warded off others. We’ve built up forces that helped push Russia out of Afghanistan only to see those same forces fly jets into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
The only thing that makes Obama’s shadowy dealings so frustrating is that he had the mandate to operate outside of the shadows. Like President George W. Bush after the 9/11 attacks, President Obama had support from peoples and governments around the world to take out Bashar al-Assad’s regime two years ago before the Russians even considered getting involved. The conspicuous allowance that President Obama gave to Assad to cross the “red line” of chemical weapons use without any real repercussions wasn’t just a missed opportunity to remove the leader. It was a sign of weakness that is going to haunt the rest of the President’s term.
Iran, China, Russia, North Korea, and other unofficial enemies of the United States know that they have but a short time to bully the United States. They won’t wait until a potentially strong leader comes into power in 2017. They’ll do everything they can to push America around now while President Obama is still in “power,” though the word really isn’t very fitting for the President.