The Syrian civil war pits the Alawite minority, which supports fellow Alawite Assad, against the Shiite majority, which includes plenty of Islamic fundamentalist groups likely to be hostile to the US if they win. A saving grace is that Hezbollah, which even the Europeans finally admitted is a terrorist group, have taken Assad's side. That should provide some impetus for the UN to intervene with a peace-keeping force. That's going to be needed for a long time to keep the sides from killing each other. The priority is for humanitarian relief. America's role should be limited, lest we fall into another bottomless pit of Mideast factionalism.
Obama dropped the ball. He should have recognized right from the start that "Arab Spring" was a major opportunity for statesmanship and American influence. He could have enunciated an "Obama Doctrine"--the US welcomes democratic movements in the Arab and Middle Eastern nations, and will support regimes that are democratic, egalitarian, tolerant of religious minorities, and that reject terrorism. He could have let the Arab nations, the world--and his fellow Americans--know where we stood, and what we stood for. Instead, he sat back and dithered. He backed himself into a corner in Syria with his "cross the red line" comment about use of chemical weapons. Did that constitute a well-thought-out policy with an end-view of what Syria would look like after American intervention?
dt, there's an Obama/Truman analogy, but it's not a positive one:
After Japan surrendered in '45 and ended its occupation of Korea, the US and USSR divided the peninsula and set up puppet regimes. The US never thought South Korea was important, withdrew American troops in '48, and in January 1950, Secretary of State Dean Acheson told the National Press Club that the US "defense perimeter" in Asia didn't include South Korea. Six months later, North Korea, with Soviet (and later Chinese) support, invaded the South. Truman had no policy vis-a-vis South Korea, and the US was forced to fight that war virtually alone, with just a skimpy loincloth of UN diplomatic support. Result was a bloody stalemate.
