Seriously, no plan survives contact with the first enemy, let alone the second or third one:
Critics are correct when they argue that President Obama doesn’t have a strategy for military victory in Syria. The reality is that, despite his decision last week to arm the opposition there, Obama is still playing for a negotiated diplomatic transition.
It’s a confusing policy with multiple objectives: Obama wants to bolster moderate opposition forces under Gen. Salim Idriss until they’re strong enough to negotiate a transitional government. He wants to counter recent offensives by Hezbollah and other Iranian-backed forces aiding President Bashar al-Assad. And he wants to keep Arab nations from bolting the U.S.-led coalition backing Idriss and instead arming radical jihadists.
Obama doesn’t want the rebels to overrun Damascus if the jihadists are the strongest faction.
Those are all fine objectives. But focusing on the last before we dethrone Assad from the throne of Syria is folly. Don't make the pursuit of the perfect plan the enemy of the good initial outcome.
We must do everything we can to overthrow the Assad regime. We can do that while bolstering moderate elements and by building knowledge of the unfriendly foes of Assad in order to help friendlies defeat the jihadis in the next stage of the struggle.
At that point, we might want to unleash the drones and special forces. And I'm sure a lot of allies--including Arab allies who did the same in Afghanistan (which Strategypage called the "special forces Olympics")--would be happy to send their special forces to kill jihadis in Syria.
The Sunni Arab victors and perhaps Lebanese probably wouldn't even mind if Israeli ground forcesswept into Lebanon at that point to smash up Hezbollah, already weakened from their shock troop role in Assad's war.
And if objectives include halting the bloodshed and securing chemical weapons assets, we can even consider an interim step in defeating Assad that includes accepting a post-Syria Assad rather than pursuing a post-Assad Syria that kills many tens of thousands more and risks dispersal of Assad's chemical arsenal. Given that Assad has already lost much of Syria, it will be easier to convince him to retreat to a core Alawite area in a loose federation where Assad is demoted to leader of the Alawite province.
Do we know what our objective in Syria is? And do we have plausible linkage between our military actions and that objective? And do we appreciate that we can't plan for the perfect outcome this far out from the end game?
