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US Counterterrorism experts: Assad's expertise in dropping barrel bombs
on bakeries and gassing kids in their sleep is what the US needs to
defeat ISIS
Counterterrorism Experts: U.S. Partnership With Assad May Be Necessary
To Take Out ISIS
Posted: 08/24/2014 11:04 am EDT Updated: 08/24/2014 11:59 am EDT
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/24/obama-assad-partnership_n_5704531.html
Sam Stein
WASHINGTON -- Two former top military and counterterrorism officials
said on Sunday that the United States should be prepared to start
working with the very dictator that the Obama administration said must
leave office because of the humanitarian atrocities he has committed.
Appearing on ABC's "This Week," General John Allen, who commanded the
Afghanistan War, and Richard Clarke, a former top counterterrorism
adviser, said that the effort to stem and ultimately kill the Islamic
State (ISIS) would require some form of partnership with Syrian
President Bashar Assad.
Allen was less committal about such a partnership, noting that the Assad
government had fed ISIS' rise with its brutal campaign to crack down on
insurgents that had radicalized sections of the Sunni population. Still,
he conceded, for an operation against ISIS to be successful, it would
require a Syria component and an informal, if not entirely unsaid,
collaboration with Assad.
"I think the actions that we take may, in fact, be not in coordination
necessarily, but provide an opportunity for coordinated effort," said
Allen. "But we don's share any values with the Iranian regime, and we
don't share any values with the Syrian regime."
Clarke, speaking moments later, almost chuckled at Allen's efforts not
to state the obvious.
"We are going to have to make a choice," he said. "If we want to
eliminate this ISIS we are going to have to deal with people we don't
like. The president said we wanted Assad out. Well, we are going to have
to say something to the Syrian government if we are going to start
bombing in Syria. And if we are going to get rid of ISIS, we are going
to have to start bombing in Syria."
Card-carrying members of the so-called foreign policy realist community
have argued for some time that a strong leader like Assad could, in
fact, be the best option for keeping a lid on the rise of ISIS. With
that in mind, they have scratched their heads at all the talk of
dispatching the Syrian president from office or of half-heartedly arming
the Syrian opposition (with weapons, they argued, that would find their
way to ISIS).
At this juncture, however, an Assad partnership would represent an
about-face for the White House that would be both huge and potentially
impossible to execute. And it's been made all the more harder to pull
off by the fact that the British government has ruled out such an
alliance.
"We may very well find that we are fighting, on some occasions, the same
people that [Assad] is, but that doesn't make us his ally," said Philip
Hammond, the foreign secretary. "It would not be practical, sensible or
helpful to even think about going down that route."
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