Syria in 2016: an exchange on what to do

[OUTLAW 09]

America's backwards Syria policy: "Simply nefarious."
http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/02/05/...ampaign=buffer …

It is not only me complaining about the total failure of US FP......and I am a simple American sitting in Berlin watching a disaster unfold in both eastern Ukraine and Syria due to the lack of coherent, clear and concise US leadership other than "talk"...just "talk".

Any thirdgrader can "talk".....

Can the Obama WH make it even worse...yes they can as the radicalization of the anti Assad forces especially FSA, al Sham and JaI will be in fact a move towards JaN and IS...so with one swift stupid move by Obama he will be adding and additional 70K fighters to JaN and IS.

While Obama and Kerry both "talk" a great game".......here is the Assad and Putin calculation...by driving the sheer destruction ie Grozny style into the heart of the anti Assad opposition it will drive them to JaN and IS.....THEN Putin and Assad can sit back and say to the Sunni's it is either me or "them" take your choice......I seriously do not think both Obama and Putin fully understand what the outcomes are on this move for Syria and the wider ME......

Taken from the article:

Ever since 2011, the United States has hidden behind the hope of a Russian shift and closed its eyes to Putin’s mischief to avoid the hard choices on Syria. When the Russian onslaught started, U.S. officials like Deputy Secretary of State Tony Blinken predicted a quagmire to justify Washington’s passivity. If Russia’s intervention was doomed to failure, after all, the United States was not on the hook to act.

Russia, however, has been not only been able to increase the tempo of its military operations, but also to justify the mounting cost. And contrary to some pundits, who hailed the Russian intervention as the best chance to check the expansion of IS, Washington knows all too well that the result of the Russian campaign is the strengthening of the jihadist group in central Syria in the short term. This is a price Washington seems willing to pay for the sake of keeping the Geneva process alive.

The bankruptcy of U.S. policy goes deeper. The United States has already conceded key points about Assad’s future — concessions that Russia and the regime have been quick to pocket, while giving nothing in return. In the lead-up to and during the first days of the Geneva talks, it became clear that the United States is putting a lot more pressure on the opposition than it does on Russia, let alone Assad. Just as Russia escalates politically and militarily, the Obama administration is cynically de-escalating, and asking its allies to do so as well. This is weakening rebel groups that rely on supply networks that the U.S. oversees: In the south, the United States has demanded a decrease in weapons deliveries to the Southern Front, while in the north, the Turkey-based operations room is reportedly dormant.

The result is a widespread and understandable feeling of betrayal in the rebellion, whose U.S.-friendly elements are increasingly losing face within opposition circles. This could have the ironic effect of fragmenting the rebellion — after years of Western governments bemoaning the divisions between these very same groups.

Actually what is interesting is that this WH has made the same exact mistakes in Ukraine causing me to ask over and over "just where is the difference between the Obama FP and the Putin FP"...there is none....