Any foreign policy criticism from the left is a joke. Especially on Syria.
Derek Chollet, Obama's Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, has been doing invaluable echo chamber work by attacking Trump and his foreign policy people. He's got the usual smears of Bolton and Pompeo in the wind.
And of course he's attacking Trump for not doing enough on Syria.
"A year ago tonight, the US bombed Syria & most pundits breathlessly talked about Trump’s muscular approach to the Middle East. How’d that turn out?" Chollet sneered on Twitter.
Let's take a little trip back in time.
In the end, a surprise diplomatic opportunity arose: following an off-hand remark from Secretary of State John Kerry that Assad could avoid airstrikes by turning over all of his chemical weapons, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov contacted his Syrian counterpart, who got Assad to agree.
“It was the right decision,” Derek Chollet, former Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, tells FRONTLINE in tomorrow’s film. “Had we conducted the military campaign that had been planned, we would not have taken out a high percentage of his chemical weapons. The credible threat of force brought about an opening for diplomacy, to come in, which then led to something that no one thought was possible.”
How'd that turn out?