The State Department's Collective Madness

Anyone who dares question this latest "group think" -- as it plunges the world into a dangerous new Cold War -- is dismissed as a "Kremlin apologist" or "Moscow stooge" just as skeptics about the Iraq War were derided as "Saddam apologists." Virtually everyone important in Official Washington marches in lock step toward war and more war. (Victoria Nuland is married to Robert Kagan, making them one of Washington's supreme power couples.)

So, that is the context of the latest State Department rebellion against Obama's more tempered policies on Syria. Looking forward to a likely Hillary Clinton administration, these 51 "diplomats" have signed their names to a "dissent" that advocates bombing the Syrian military to protect Syria's "moderate" rebels who -- to the degree they even exist -- fight mostly under the umbrella of Al Qaeda's Nusra Front and its close ally, Ahrar al Sham.

The muddled thinking in this "dissent" is that by bombing the Syrian military, the U.S. government can enhance the power of the rebels and supposedly force Assad to negotiate his own removal. But there is no reason to think that this plan would work.

In early 2014, when the rebels held a relatively strong position, U.S.-arranged peace talks amounted to a rebel-dominated conference that made Assad's departure a pre-condition and excluded Syria's Iranian allies from attending. Not surprisingly, Assad's representative went home and the talks collapsed.

Now, with Assad holding a relatively strong hand, backed by Russian air power and Iranian ground forces, the "dissenting" U.S. diplomats say peace is impossible because the rebels are in no position to compel Assad's departure. Thus, the "dissenters" recommend that the U.S. expand its role in the war to again lift the rebels, but that would only mean more maximalist demands from the rebels.

Serious Risks

This proposed wider war, however, would carry some very serious risks, including the possibility that the Syrian army could collapse, opening the gates of Damascus to Al Qaeda's Nusra Front (and its allies) or the Islamic State -- a scenario that, as The New York Times noted, the "memo doesn't address."

Russian President Vladimir Putin greets Secretary of State John Kerry before meetings at the Kremlin on Dec. 15, 2015.
(Image by (State Department photo))   Details   DMCA

Currently, the Islamic State and -- to a lesser degree -- the Nusra Front are in retreat, chased by the Syrian army with Russian air support and by some Kurdish forces with U.S. backing. But those gains could easily be reversed. There is also the risk of sparking a wider war with Iran and/or Russia.

But such cavalier waving aside of grave dangers is nothing new for the neocons and liberal hawks. They have consistently dreamt up schemes that may sound good at a think-tank conference or read well in an op-ed article, but fail in the face of ground truth where usually U.S. soldiers are expected to fix the mess.

We have seen this wishful thinking go awry in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Ukraine and even Syria, where Obama's acquiescence to provide arms and training for the so-called "unicorns" -- the hard-to-detect "moderate" rebels -- saw those combatants and their weapons absorbed into Al Qaeda's or Islamic State's ranks.

Yet, the neocons and liberal hawks who control the State Department -- and are eagerly looking forward to a Hillary Clinton presidency -- will never stop coming up with these crazy notions until a concerted effort is made to assess accountability for all the failures that that they have inflicted on U.S. foreign policy.

As long as there is no accountability -- as long as the U.S. president won't rein in these warmongers -- the madness will continue and only grow more dangerous.

[For more on this topic, see Consortiumnews.com's "Democrats Are Now the Aggressive War Party" and "Would a Clinton Win Mean More Wars?']