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Former Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford said that Barack Obama’s strategy in Syria is “like a hope, it’s a wish and it’s been a wish since 2012.”
Testifying before the House Armed Services Committee on Tuesday, Ford said, “I think the biggest problem with our Syria policy is we have a strategy which is to get to a new national unity government [however,] we have no tactics to get there.”
“It’s like a hope, it’s a wish and it’s been a wish since 2012. But we’re not getting any closer, frankly. As I mentioned before, the Russian intervention probably pushes it even farther back. So to me, the fundamentals of the strategy are we want an indigenous force in Syria and in Iraq able to eventually grind out, eliminate Islamic State and other extremists,” Ford said.
“In order to do that, you have to have governments that basically promote national reconciliation on some level. I think we are seeing that emerge in Iraq, we are nowhere near it in Syria and I think if the press reports of what I read of what General Petraeus said to the committee last week are accurate, I subscribe fully to the sorts of things that he was talking about in terms of putting pressure on it in order to get to a serious negotiation. So far, the administration has declined to do that,” Ford claimed.