The Foggy Bottom Bomb Squad

Like any other workplace, the State Department isn't monolithic, and diplomats disagree on foriegn policy all the time. What is unusual is having such disagreements made glaringly public as an attack on a sitting President and his foreign policy.

More than 50 State Department diplomats have signed an internal memo sharply critical of the Obama administration’s policy in Syria, urging the United States to carry out military strikes against the government of President Bashar al-Assad to stop its persistent violations of a cease-fire in the country’s five-year-old civil war. 

The memo, a draft of which was provided to The New York Times by a State Department official, says American policy has been “overwhelmed” by the unrelenting violence in Syria. It calls for “a judicious use of stand-off and air weapons, which would undergird and drive a more focused and hard-nosed U.S.-led diplomatic process.” 

Such a step would represent a radical shift in the administration’s approach to the civil war in Syria, and there is little evidence thatPresident Obama has plans to change course. Mr. Obama has emphasized the military campaign against the Islamic State over efforts to dislodge Mr. Assad. Diplomatic efforts to end the conflict, led by Secretary of State John Kerry, have all but collapsed. 

But the memo, filed in the State Department’s “dissent channel,” underscores the deep rifts and lingering frustration within the administration over how to deal with a war that has killed more than 400,000 people. 

The State Department set up the channel during the Vietnam War as a way for employees who had disagreements with policies to register their protest with the secretary of state and other top officials, without fear of reprisal. While dissent cables are not that unusual, the number of signatures on this document, 51, is extremely large, if not unprecedented. 

The names on the memo are almost all midlevel officials — many of them careerdiplomats — who have been involved in the administration’s Syria policy over the last five years, at home or abroad. They range from a Syria desk officer in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs to a former deputy to the American ambassador in Damascus.

While there are no widely recognized names, higher-level State Department officials are known to share their concerns. Mr. Kerry himself has pushed for stronger American action against Syria, in part to force a diplomatic solution on Mr. Assad. The president has resisted such pressure, and has been backed up by his military commanders, who have raised questions about what would happen in the event that Mr. Assad was forced from power — a scenario that the draft memo does not address.

This is some pretty heavy stuff  to see from career diplomats, wanting increased conflict and military action (which goes to show you that not everybody in the State Department is against military violence over diplomacy.)

And that leaves us in a quagmire: what's happening in Syria as a result of President Obama's single most enduring policy failure is clearly and not only not working in any fashion, but failing overwhelmingly.  However, nobody seems to have a better idea than what we're doing now that wouldn't turn Syria into a failed state controlled by ISIS.

It's an awful position and President Obama deserves a massive share of the blame for the situation coming to this.  Syria has been a screw-up of Dubya-sized proportions, 400,000 dead and 5 million displaced, in many ways worse than Iraq or Afgnaistan.

"Not making it any worse" will be Hillary Clinton's job in a few months, and I do not envy her. And yet that's exactly what these career State Department diplomats are proposing, to make it far, far worse.

It's depressing.