President Trump has announced American air strikes against the Assad regime in Syria, in partnership with Britain and France. The airstrikes are for one night only, supposedly targeting the “heart” of Syria’s chemical weapons program, though the Department of Defense “acknowledged that the Syrian government most likely retained some ability to again attack its own […]
Tag Archives | Bashar al-Assad
Why “Win and Go Home” Doesn’t Work
President Trump took to Twitter (obligatory eye roll) to threaten Syria over its latest chemical weapons attack on civilians. Yet previous reports indicated that after the collapse of ISIS, Trump had been wanting to declare victory and go home. Well, that’s the trick, isn’t it? The “win and go home” meme is popular among America […]
Our Multiple-Choice Strategy in Syria
The United States has launched air strikes against the Syrian regime, but do we have a strategy for Syria yet? Judging from the past few days, we have too many. Launching a couple dozen missiles to blow up a runway at an airbase controlled by the regime may or may not sound impressive, but in […]
All the Good Syria Options Are Over
President Obama has been criticized for his performance in his latest interview on “60 minutes.” The president certainly seemed wrong-footed and was non-responsive to Steve Kroft’s questions. But it wasn’t just because the president seems tired, impatient, and disengaged. (At one point, Kroft observes, “I know you don’t want to talk about this.”) It’s the […]
The Wish-Fulfilling Prophecy
Top Stories of the Year: #2 Some of us have been warning for years that President Obama is undermining all the pillars of US foreign policy, which would lead to disaster. This second biggest story of this year is that the disaster has arrived. America’s foreign policy collapsed in many small ways, and in two […]
Strategy or Fantasy?
President Obama has finally come up with a strategy against the self-styled “Islamic State” in Iraq and Syria. Better late than never—and there is much in this strategy that is correct, if the administration is actually willing to face up to the reality of what its strategy will require. Which we have very good reason […]
Getting Serious About Syria
Has anyone thought about what we’re going to have to do about the Islamic State—I mean, really thought about it? It has become obvious that the group that calls itself ISIS or just the Islamic State is the most serious terrorist threat to the United States since 9/11, and allowing its formation is the biggest […]
The Nobel Prize for Posturing
So you’ve probably seen the news already. Last week, the Nobel Committee awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to the UN’s Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which has only just begun work in Syria in an attempt to enforce a Russian-brokered agreement to destroy the Assad regime’s chemical weapons. The Nobel Peace Prize stopped […]
Following from in Front
Top Stories of 2012: #4 Story #4 is about America’s current foreign policy, but in this article, my goal is not to recap my previous coverage from this year but to complete it by providing an overview of the big picture. The big picture of our foreign policy is that America is following from in […]
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No, We Don’t Admire Putin
The new vogue on the left is to accuse anyone who criticizes our current mess of a foreign policy of being “almost treasonous.” My colleague David Harsanyi dispatches this claim rather nicely. Then again, we’re so old we remember when dissent was patriotic. But there’s another aspect to this claim. Obama’s apologists accuse us of […]