What is your personal "red line" for U.S. involvement in Syria?

White House Officials Push for Widening War in Syria Over Pentagon Objections
Two Trump officials want to confront Iranian-backed fighters, but Defense Secretary James Mattis has balked at the idea

A pair of top White House officials is pushing to broaden the war in Syria, viewing it as an opportunity to confront Iran and its proxy forces on the ground there, according to two sources familiar with the debate inside the Donald Trump administration.

Ezra Cohen-Watnick, the senior director for intelligence on the National Security Council, and Derek Harvey, the NSC’s top Middle East advisor, want the United States to start going on the offensive in southern Syria, where, in recent weeks, the U.S. military has taken a handful of defensive actions against Iranian-backed forces fighting in support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Their plans are making even traditional Iran hawks nervous, including Defense Secretary James Mattis, who has personally shot down their proposals more than once, the two sources said.

The situation in southern Syria has escalated in recent weeks, after a U.S. warplane shot down an Iranian-made drone that had attacked U.S. forces on patrol with Syrian allies near an American outpost at al-Tanf. The drone attack came after two U.S. airstrikes on Iranian-backed Shiite militias, which had moved too close to the Americans’ garrison.

Despite the more aggressive stance pushed by some White House officials, Mattis, military commanders, and top U.S. diplomats all oppose opening up a broader front against Iran and its proxies in southeastern Syria, viewing it as a risky move that could draw the United States into a dangerous confrontation with Iran, defense officials said. Such a clash could trigger retaliation against U.S. troops deployed in Iraq and Syria, where Tehran has armed thousands of Shiite militia fighters and deployed hundreds of Revolutionary Guard officers.

Some administration officials have argued for taking on Iran in Yemen too, by expanding support for the Saudi-led coalition battling Houthi rebels, who enjoy backing from Iran. Like Syria, however, a larger U.S. role in Yemen’s civil war carries an array of risks, and experts say treating Yemen as a proxy war with Iran could backfire badly. In their fight against the Houthi rebels, forces loyal to ousted President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, and the Saudi-led coalition that backs them, have worked with local actors with suspected ties to al Qaeda.

The Growing U.S.-Iran Proxy Fight in Syria
The scramble for Islamic State territory is raising the risks of escalation.

On Sunday evening, a U.S. warplane shot down a Syrian jet after it bombed American-backed rebels in northern Syria. This marked the first time the United States has downed a Syrian warplane since the start of the country’s civil war in 2011. On Tuesday, the Pentagon announced that the United States had shot down an Iranian-made drone in the country’s southeast, where American personnel have been training anti-Islamic State fighters.

Since President Donald Trump took office, the U.S. military has struck the Syrian regime or its allies at least five times, in most cases to protect U.S.-backed rebels and their American advisers. Even if the Pentagon may not want to directly engage Syrian forces or their Russian and Iranian-backed allies, there’s a danger of accidental escalation, especially as various forces continue to converge on eastern and southern Syria to reclaim strategic territory from ISIS. Russia, for its part, angrily condemned the U.S. action and threatened on Monday to treat all coalition planes in Syria as potential targets.

Russia Threatens U.S. Warplanes in Syria, Escalating Tensions

Russia warned Monday that any U.S. or coalition aircraft flying west of the Euphrates River in Syria will be tracked by Russian warplanes and anti-aircraft batteries, a swift reaction to Sunday’s shoot-down of a Syrian Su-22 bomber by an American F-18.

It is unclear if the Russians have the capability to track the dozens of sorties flown by U.S. and coalition aircraft over Syria on any given day, but the threat further raises tensions as U.S.-backed Arab and Kurdish fighters press on the Islamic State’s stronghold of Raqqa, and American forces increasingly tangle with Iranian-backed militias in Syria’s south.

Russia is a staunch ally of the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad, along with Iran, and the downing of the Syrian warplane by a U.S. fighter jet represented yet another escalation in an increasingly tense situation unfolding in southeastern Syria. With Islamic State losing territory, forces loyal to the Syrian regime and Iranian-backed militia are increasingly butting heads with troops aligned with the United States.

Watch Out Pylon! wrote:I'vs always wanted to see how we stack up against the Russkies mano a mano. I'd say full steam ahead Mr. President.

So back to the original question: Are we are headed toward a great-power conflict in the middle east?

In my view, until the U.S. presents a positive political strategy, we will continue to have direct clashes between Russian-supported Shiite militias and U.S. forces, which may well produce an accident in which either Russia shoots down a U.S. plane or vice versa. Even then, I think that neither Washington nor Moscow would rationally want a conventional fight. But conflict dynamics are never wholly rational; far from it. Violence can generate new emotional pressures in conflict and spin out of control in a direction nobody anticipated.

Besides the risk of escalation with Russia, the more the United States starts directly attacking Shiite militias, the more likely the Iranian nuclear deal will completely break down. This would reopen the possibility of a U.S. war with Iran. Even before that point, Iran would likely react to counter the United States in the region by exerting much more aggressive influence over Baghdad. The nightmare scenario would be an Iranian puppet like ex-Prime Minister Nouri alMaliki getting back into power, and issuing a demand for U.S. forces to leave Iraq, which would put Washington in a vexed position of either accepting or returning to direct rule.

To avoid escalations of this sort, the Trump administration should now lay out a positively defined political vision for the Middle East, which would accompany and tether its negatively defined anti-Islamic State and anti-Iranian goals. At this time, the fundamental part of this vision must be a clear U.S. position on the future of Kurdish-held areas in Iraq and Syria.

On a morning when you would have expected the Morning Joe panel to be all about Trump’s CNN wrestling tweet, a Washington Post editor/columnist painted an amazingly positive portrait of the president’s actions in Syria.

WaPo’s David Ignatius has just returned from a week in Syria. He was almost apologetic in prefacing his remarks: “I’m going to say something that in some ways is sympathetic to Trump.”

He then proceeded to say that he was told by top US commanders that “the most daring and decisive” attack in the battle of Raqqa would not have happened if it hadn’t been for President Trump’s decision to delegate authority to commanders in the field.


Ignatius’ contrasting depiction of the Obama administration was incredibly damning: “under Obama, that would have taken a couple of weeks of White House meetings and they still wouldn’t have made up their mind.”

Ignatius also said that the name Trump was cheered whenever it was mentioned during meetings Ignatius had with Syrian forces trying to take out Assad. One Syrian commander praised Trump for having what Ignatius described as a vulgar term that in Spanish is “cojones.”

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told the UN Secretary General that the fate of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is in Russia’s hands and that the Trump administration’s priority in the war-torn country is the defeat of the Islamic State, according to a report on Monday.

Tillerson made the comments to Secretary-General Antonio Guterres during a private meeting last week at the State Department, Foreign Policy reported, citing three diplomatic sources.

But a State Department official said the US is still “committed to the Geneva process,” a 2012 agreement between Russia, the US and other Western powers to establish a transitional government in Syria.

LooseGoose wrote:WaPo’s Ignatius: Fighters in Syria cheer at mention of Trump name

On a morning when you would have expected the Morning Joe panel to be all about Trump’s CNN wrestling tweet, a Washington Post editor/columnist painted an amazingly positive portrait of the president’s actions in Syria.

WaPo’s David Ignatius has just returned from a week in Syria. He was almost apologetic in prefacing his remarks: “I’m going to say something that in some ways is sympathetic to Trump.”

He then proceeded to say that he was told by top US commanders that “the most daring and decisive” attack in the battle of Raqqa would not have happened if it hadn’t been for President Trump’s decision to delegate authority to commanders in the field.


Ignatius’ contrasting depiction of the Obama administration was incredibly damning: “under Obama, that would have taken a couple of weeks of White House meetings and they still wouldn’t have made up their mind.”

Ignatius also said that the name Trump was cheered whenever it was mentioned during meetings Ignatius had with Syrian forces trying to take out Assad. One Syrian commander praised Trump for having what Ignatius described as a vulgar term that in Spanish is “cojones.”

Rocinante wrote:

LooseGoose wrote:WaPo’s Ignatius: Fighters in Syria cheer at mention of Trump name

Putting decision making on the ground is great when you have a strategy. Not sure what that big picture strategy is right now. We need to get out.

The Trump administration is prepared to consider joint stability operations with Russia in Syria, including no-fly zones, cease-fire observers and coordinated deliveries of humanitarian aid, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said late Wednesday.

In a statement issued as he departed for Europe, where he will join President Trump in Germany on Thursday, Tillerson said that the United States and Russia have successfully cooperated in establishing deconfliction areas in Syria to avoid contact between their air operations.

MOSCOW — The Kremlin is bringing a new weapon to the fight against the Islamic State militant group in Syria, using market-based incentives tied to oil and mining rights to reward private security contractors who secure territory from the extremists, Russian news outlets have reported.

So far, two Russian companies are known to have received contracts under the new policy, according to the reports: Evro Polis, which is set to receive profits from oil and gas wells it seizes from the Islamic State using contract soldiers, and Stroytransgaz, which signed a phosphate-mining deal for a site that was under militant control at the time.

The agreements, made with the Syrian government, are seen as incentives for companies affiliated with Russian security contractors, who reportedly employ about 2,500 soldiers in the country, to push the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, out of territory near Palmyra, in central Syria.

Some current and former officials who support the program cast the move as a major concession.

“This is a momentous decision,” said a current official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a covert program. “Putin won in Syria.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/trump-ends-covert-cia-program-to-arm-anti-assad-rebels-in-syria-a-move-sought-by-moscow/2017/07/19/b6821a62-6beb-11e7-96ab-5f38140b38cc_story.html?utm_term=.8693bc50804d

BEIRUT/AMMAN (Reuters) - Syrian rebels said on Thursday a U.S. decision to halt a covert CIA program of military aid would mark a big blow to the Syrian opposition and risked allowing jihadists to tighten their grip over the insurgency.

Rebels who have received aid under the CIA program said they had yet to be informed of the U.S. decision first reported by the Washington Post on Wednesday and confirmed by two U.S. officials to Reuters.

A Free Syrian Army (FSA) commander said the U.S. decision risked triggering the collapse of the moderate opposition, which would benefit President Bashar al-Assad and jihadists linked to al Qaeda that have long sought to extinguish more moderate groups.

LooseGoose wrote:

Rocinante wrote:

Putting decision making on the ground is great when you have a strategy. Not sure what that big picture strategy is right now. We need to get out.

Agree. I wish we had never gotten in. I wish the last President had gotten us out completely. I hope this one does.

Syria could have been characterized as being “in turmoil” for the entirety of the U.S. presence there. It will be in turmoil even if U.S. troops stay indefinitely. Leaving American troops in Syria could be characterized as “a gamble” every bit as accurately as withdrawing them. Risking less blood and treasure in the Middle East and bringing home U.S. troops could be characterized as “the central goal of Trump’s Middle Eastern policy” as accurately as the question-begging “containing Iran’s regional influence.”

LooseGoose wrote:Amazing that we now have the Atlantic taking an anti-press view.

More on the knee jerk opposition to Trump - now supporting our troops dying in Syria.
How the Press Sustains the Forever War - - Too much media coverage of Trump’s decision to withdraw from Syria treats indefinite deployments as the only legitimate option.  

Syria could have been characterized as being “in turmoil” for the entirety of the U.S. presence there. It will be in turmoil even if U.S. troops stay indefinitely. Leaving American troops in Syria could be characterized as “a gamble” every bit as accurately as withdrawing them. Risking less blood and treasure in the Middle East and bringing home U.S. troops could be characterized as “the central goal of Trump’s Middle Eastern policy” as accurately as the question-begging “containing Iran’s regional influence.”

LooseGoose wrote:Amazing that we now have the Atlantic taking an anti-press view.

More on the knee jerk opposition to Trump - now supporting our troops dying in Syria.
How the Press Sustains the Forever War - - Too much media coverage of Trump’s decision to withdraw from Syria treats indefinite deployments as the only legitimate option.  

Syria could have been characterized as being “in turmoil” for the entirety of the U.S. presence there. It will be in turmoil even if U.S. troops stay indefinitely. Leaving American troops in Syria could be characterized as “a gamble” every bit as accurately as withdrawing them. Risking less blood and treasure in the Middle East and bringing home U.S. troops could be characterized as “the central goal of Trump’s Middle Eastern policy” as accurately as the question-begging “containing Iran’s regional influence.”

DWags wrote:

LooseGoose wrote:Amazing that we now have the Atlantic taking an anti-press view.

More on the knee jerk opposition to Trump - now supporting our troops dying in Syria.
How the Press Sustains the Forever War - - Too much media coverage of Trump’s decision to withdraw from Syria treats indefinite deployments as the only legitimate option.  

Sounds all well and good. I’m happy troops are coming home. I don’t want American blood spilled there either.

Goose? Why, however, do you think Mattis resigned and do you trust his judgement more than trumps?

LooseGoose wrote:

DWags wrote:

Sounds all well and good. I’m happy troops are coming home. I don’t want American blood spilled there either.

Goose? Why, however, do you think Mattis resigned and do you trust his judgement more than trumps?

I trust his judgment more in general. I think he resigned because he felt we should stay in the wars. In this case I think he's dead wrong.

Some more cases made against staying,

Trump is right to withdraw US troops from Syria. We've done our job by defeating ISIS.

The Syria Fairy Tale Lives!


And of course the knee jerk opposition to Trump is actually driving most of the resistance here.

I thought this was pretty accurate:

LooseGoose wrote:

DWags wrote:

Sounds all well and good. I’m happy troops are coming home. I don’t want American blood spilled there either.

Goose? Why, however, do you think Mattis resigned and do you trust his judgement more than trumps?

I trust his judgment more in general. I think he resigned because he felt we should stay in the wars. In this case I think he's dead wrong.

Some more cases made against staying,

Trump is right to withdraw US troops from Syria. We've done our job by defeating ISIS.

The Syria Fairy Tale Lives!


And of course the knee jerk opposition to Trump is actually driving most of the resistance here.

I thought this was pretty accurate:

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Stephen M. Walt is the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University. @stephenwalt

For starters, this situation reminds us how stupid it was for the United States to have invaded Iraq back in 2003. Despite the recent (and richly deserved) demise of the pro-war Weekly Standard—the publication that consistently acted as a cheerleader for the campaign for war—there are a lot of unrepentant neoconservatives out there who still believe the solution to most global problems is the vigorous application of American power. But the war that the neocons dreamed up, lobbied for, and eventually sold to a gullible President George W. Bush is a big part of why the Middle East is so screwed up today. Had there been no Iraq War, there would have been no U.S. occupation, no anti-American insurgency, no “Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia,” and therefore no Islamic State. Toppling Saddam Hussein also removed Iran’s main regional adversary and was thus a free gift to the clerical regime. Yet the strategic geniuses (including current U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton) who promoted this ill-fated scheme keep recycling new versions of the same policies today.

Second, we should be wary of the breathless rhetoric that is already being used to describe Trump’s decision. The Times’ headline (“A Strategy of Retreat”) is wholly misleading, as the orderly removal of a small U.S. force is hardly a Dunkirk-style evacuation or akin to Napoleon’s withdrawal from Moscow. Nor does it herald the end of the U.S. presence in the Middle East. After all, the United States still has over 40,000 soldiers, sailors, and air personnel in or around the region, and it still provides generous military aid and vast amounts of weaponry to its regional clients.

Third, it is equally misleading to talk about the United States “losing” Syria, because the country was never America’s to begin with. On the contrary, it has been a Soviet or Russian client state since the mid-1950s, which is of course why Moscow has worked hard to keep the Bashar al-Assad regime from falling. To say that Trump (or Obama before him) “lost” Syria implies that the United States once controlled its fate, or that it had a strategy for gaining control that had some reasonable prospect of success. But if we have learned nothing from the past 15 years, it is that the United States cannot control any of the countries in the Middle East and should not spend a lot of blood or treasure trying to do the impossible.

Fourth, it is worth remembering that prior to the Syrian uprising (and the subsequent emergence of the Islamic State), Washington never cared very much about who ran Syria and certainly didn’t see Syria’s internal politics as a vital U.S. concern. U.S. presidents from Richard Nixon to George W. Bush did business with the Assad family when it was in the U.S. interest to do so, even though everyone knew it was a brutal dictatorship. Yet when the Arab Spring erupted, the Obama administration suddenly concluded that Syria’s internal politics mattered greatly and that “Assad must go,” even though they had no idea how to remove him or how to create a new government to replace his Alawite regime.

Fifth, many observers have been quick to see the redeployment as a loss for the United States and a big win for Russia, Iran, Hezbollah, Turkey, or whomever, and to assume that some or all of these actors will quickly consolidate a lot of valuable influence in Syria. Maybe so, but Syria isn’t much of a prize at this point and may even be something of a liability. It was always a weak state, and its economy and infrastructure have been severely damaged by a punishing civil war. Instead of being a major strategic asset, Syria is more likely to turn into a costly quagmire for the supposed victors. The area remains a cauldron of competing political forces, and as the political scientist Mark Katz points out, their competing interests are likely to come to the fore once the United States withdraws. If so, then handing the Syrian quagmire off to others could be a net win for the United States.

 What’s really at stake in Syria? Is Trump following in former President Barack Obama’s footsteps (as David Sanger of the New York Times suggests), and continuing a “retreat” from America’s previous engagement in the region? Or has Trump simply ordered a prudent redeployment of a very small U.S. force, thereby ending an otherwise open-ended commitment whose strategic purpose was unclear? What broader lessons, if any, should be drawn from this latest episode?

LooseGoose wrote:From FP - the same mag TN quoted to start this thread.

Good Riddance to America’s Syria Policy As usual, Donald Trump has done the right thing in the wrong way.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Stephen M. Walt is the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University. @stephenwalt

For starters, this situation reminds us how stupid it was for the United States to have invaded Iraq back in 2003. Despite the recent (and richly deserved) demise of the pro-war Weekly Standard—the publication that consistently acted as a cheerleader for the campaign for war—there are a lot of unrepentant neoconservatives out there who still believe the solution to most global problems is the vigorous application of American power. But the war that the neocons dreamed up, lobbied for, and eventually sold to a gullible President George W. Bush is a big part of why the Middle East is so screwed up today. Had there been no Iraq War, there would have been no U.S. occupation, no anti-American insurgency, no “Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia,” and therefore no Islamic State. Toppling Saddam Hussein also removed Iran’s main regional adversary and was thus a free gift to the clerical regime. Yet the strategic geniuses (including current U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton) who promoted this ill-fated scheme keep recycling new versions of the same policies today.

Second, we should be wary of the breathless rhetoric that is already being used to describe Trump’s decision. The Times’ headline (“A Strategy of Retreat”) is wholly misleading, as the orderly removal of a small U.S. force is hardly a Dunkirk-style evacuation or akin to Napoleon’s withdrawal from Moscow. Nor does it herald the end of the U.S. presence in the Middle East. After all, the United States still has over 40,000 soldiers, sailors, and air personnel in or around the region, and it still provides generous military aid and vast amounts of weaponry to its regional clients.

Third, it is equally misleading to talk about the United States “losing” Syria, because the country was never America’s to begin with. On the contrary, it has been a Soviet or Russian client state since the mid-1950s, which is of course why Moscow has worked hard to keep the Bashar al-Assad regime from falling. To say that Trump (or Obama before him) “lost” Syria implies that the United States once controlled its fate, or that it had a strategy for gaining control that had some reasonable prospect of success. But if we have learned nothing from the past 15 years, it is that the United States cannot control any of the countries in the Middle East and should not spend a lot of blood or treasure trying to do the impossible.

Fourth, it is worth remembering that prior to the Syrian uprising (and the subsequent emergence of the Islamic State), Washington never cared very much about who ran Syria and certainly didn’t see Syria’s internal politics as a vital U.S. concern. U.S. presidents from Richard Nixon to George W. Bush did business with the Assad family when it was in the U.S. interest to do so, even though everyone knew it was a brutal dictatorship. Yet when the Arab Spring erupted, the Obama administration suddenly concluded that Syria’s internal politics mattered greatly and that “Assad must go,” even though they had no idea how to remove him or how to create a new government to replace his Alawite regime.

Fifth, many observers have been quick to see the redeployment as a loss for the United States and a big win for Russia, Iran, Hezbollah, Turkey, or whomever, and to assume that some or all of these actors will quickly consolidate a lot of valuable influence in Syria. Maybe so, but Syria isn’t much of a prize at this point and may even be something of a liability. It was always a weak state, and its economy and infrastructure have been severely damaged by a punishing civil war. Instead of being a major strategic asset, Syria is more likely to turn into a costly quagmire for the supposed victors. The area remains a cauldron of competing political forces, and as the political scientist Mark Katz points out, their competing interests are likely to come to the fore once the United States withdraws. If so, then handing the Syrian quagmire off to others could be a net win for the United States.

: “Reminder: 151 House Dems voted against the waiver that was required to make Mattis the SECDEF in the first place. Now Dems pretend the military can’t run without him.”

Travis of the Cosmos wrote:They don’t pretend that and also you provide quotes without saying who you’re quoting because you’re, at your core, a coward.

kingstonlake wrote:

Travis of the Cosmos wrote:They don’t pretend that and also you provide quotes without saying who you’re quoting because you’re, at your core, a coward.

You angry bro?