Should Obama follow this advice or reject it?
Personally I think the advice is foolhardy and dangerous, risking confrontation with the Russians, who would certainly nt sit idly by while their ally was attacked. And to what end? The regime represents a substantial number of Syrians who aren’t just going to disappear when Assad falls.
Have these people learned nothing from the disaster that was Iraq post-Saddam?
The headline should read "State Department Officials call for nulcear war. Cause thats what they are going to get if this happens.
Really? How does that work? An Apache helicopter destroys one of Assad’s tanks, and Putin launches hundreds of missiles at Washington, DC?
An Apache Sqd destroys a column of Syrian Arab Army, killing amongst others Russian Special Forces. Putin orders the VVS to provide cover for Russians and they shoot down American planes, which results in the US attacking Russian Airbases in Syria, the Russians retaliate by sinking a CV in the Med, the Amewricans launch strikes against the Russian Naval Base… and so on until it ends with Minuteman on a 30 kin flight to Russia.
Did Tom Clancy write that for you?
Nobody’s destroying the world over Syria. It’s not that important to either side.
ETA: The Russians could sink 8 carriers and it doesn’t mean there would be nuclear war. I mean, get real.
So the Russians kill tens of thousands of American sailors, and we shrug it off?
If they fight conventionally, we fight conventionally.
We’ve done more than enough military adventuring in that part of the world. I would bring our troops home and stay the hell out of it. People have been killing each other over there for thousands of years, and will likely still be at it at the heat death of the universe.
You must have heard that on Fox news because I know it to be a heinous lie. Why just the other day I see Obama on the tube telling me the Syrian situation was settled down and we were winning.
Alas, the right time to take down Assad was back when he originally crossed the chemical-weapons “redline.” Before Russia was on the field.
Obama has been rejecting that advice for years now … I don’t see him changing his mind until November …
Haven’t we all seen a movie with this exact same plot before?
I would imagine that leaving isn’t quite as easy as it looks. There are consequences for leaving. I don’t know if we have a choice though.
It seems that whenever we take out some dictator who kills and tortures have the people, some religious weirdos take over and kill and torture everyone.
You’d think we’d learn taking out the strong man and plunging the country into civil war doesn’t work very well. Syria is already in civil war with who knows how many inside and outside factions in play. How is getting rid of Assad supposed to help?
We should probably help Assad reestablish control, stop the mass exodus of refugees and go back to nagging about democratic reforms.
Yes, it’s a really great idea to kill dozens or hundreds of Russians in attacking Assad. Brilliant. Can’t wait to see how that plays out.
Because we didn’t learn our lesson in Iraq? ISIS will effectively become the government of Syria without Assad.
With some emphaiss added
Okay so there’s 51 as opposed to 13,000 Foreign Service employees and 11,000 Civil Service employees (according to wiki). The best CNN can do is try to equate the fringe views of a tiny minority of junior folks that want to go full on regime change to department leadership that is leaning towards an unspecified more aggressive stance without going that far. That overall stance isn’t new. This memo really isn’t meaningful news either. The memo does offer a chance to use some hyperbole and implication to drive traffic.
Slow news day CNN?!? Needed to get clicks up?
I’m far from convinced that the consequences from leaving would be worse than the consequences for staying.
The utter hell of it is…yeah, that would make more sense than destabilizing him further (which benefits ISIS more than anyone else!)
It could be part of a deal: if he stops killing civilians, we’ll stop blowing up his equipment. He might even go for it!