Boston herald
The other shoe just dropped on what President Trump might have given away to Vladimir Putin during those G-20 meetings.
The Washington Post has reported that the president has decided to end the CIA’s covert program to arm and train moderate Syrian rebels who were engaged in a long-running fight to oust the reprehensible Bashar Assad.
Nothing good can come of this — not for the long-suffering Syrian people, not for the region and not for the future of U.S. diplomacy.
It is basically an admission that Assad — and his Russian benefactors — have won the battle. The Syrian dictator will remain in power for the foreseeable future and Putin will have a hold in the region for just about as long as he wants it.
Perhaps we should have seen the handwriting on this foreign policy wall when just five days into the first announced limited cease-fire in Syria Trump said, “We are working on the second cease-fire in a very rough part of Syria. If we get that and a few more, all of a sudden we are going to have no bullets being fired in Syria.”
That kind of “peace” — the peace of selling out those who took the United States at its word that they would have our support — comes at a very high price. What might the Syrian rebels still fighting the Islamic State under the auspices of the U.S. Defense Department think about the strength of U.S. will now?
In fact, it was those very same CIA-aided rebels who fought so courageously and so well that Assad had little choice but to turn to Russia in 2015 and plead his case for more direct involvement.
U.S. Sen. John McCain, still as clear-thinking as ever, said in a statement issued from his hospital bed that if the reports are true, “The administration is playing right into the hands of Vladimir Putin. Making any concession to Russia, absent a broader strategy for Syria, is irresponsible and short-sighted.”
The point is that Trump gave away the store and got nothing in return, all while casting doubt on America’s role in the region. Irresponsible and short-sighted is right.