I've said we need to define what we want to do in Syria because the interim objective of defeating ISIL has achieved the interim step of denying the terror group a territorial base to support their terror and attempt to define Islam:
The Obama administration ignored the logical consequences of saying Assad had to step down by waging a parallel war as a de facto ally of Assad against the common enemy of ISIL that put off enforcing that declaration. The defeat of the ISIL caliphate has exposed the wide gap between the stated preference for Assad to leave and the focus of military action on ISIL only. So what do we do now?
Apparently we have objectives now:
Speaking on Fox News Sunday, Haley listed three aims for the United States: ensuring that chemical weapons are not used in any way that pose a risk to U.S. interests, that Islamic State is defeated and that there is a good vantage point to watch what Iran is doing.
What of the aims?
Depressingly, by defining the WMD issue in terms of how they threaten US interests in Syria, we abandon the 2013 Kerry-Lavrov chemical weapons deal not even 5 years old that committed Syria to abandon all chemical weapons and not use any.
Committing to the defeat of ISIL is good in that it learns from the mistake of leaving Iraq in 2011 when jihadis were almost completely defeated, which gave jihadis room to regenerate and capture more than they had controlled at the height of the Iraq War COIN phase. But in one sense that is simply conflating the objective for ISIL with an objective for Syria because ISIL is in Syria. Without ISIL, do we still have an objective in Syria if Assad actually abandons chemical weapons? Remember, if Assad finally defeats the rebels in the west, he could recommit to getting rid of chemical weapons completely because he won't need them. So what then?
That's where the third objective comes in: watching what Iran is doing.
Watching isn't as strong as saying we want to expel Iran from Syria, which is what we should want. But it does allow us to stay in eastern Syria and work to cut an overland supply route to western Iran and Lebanon where Hezbollah is based; and does allow America to protect our anti-ISIL allies even after ISIL is defeated in Syria for good. And we could replace ISIL focus with al Qaeda affiliate focus when that happens.
But by refusing to explicitly discuss Assad, who Obama once said had to leave office, Trump continues to kick the can down the road by leaving that issue to a separate call to address Assad through the Geneva peace process that has simply talked while casualties approach half a million dead in Syria.
Mind you, we don't have sufficient interests in what happens in western Syria to commit 100,000 ground troops to fight there and be capable of defeating Assad's army and associated militias.
And despite the technical precision of our missile barrage on Assad's chemical warfare facilities, this Russian effort demonstrates that while we may destroy things from the air, controlling the ground is what Russia is about:
Russia has sent two warships carrying tanks and military equipment towards the Middle East following co-ordinated military action in Syria.
The boats were spotted on The Bosphorus on Sunday, as Vladimir Putin warned that the world would experience ‘chaos’ if Syria was attacked again.
Note that the list of weapons doesn't include actual "tanks."
But what do we do in eastern Syria if Assad finally wins in the west and rebuilds an army capable of moving east to reincorporate all of Syria under his regime? We cannot achieve the last objective Haley stated, nor the unstated objective of protecting our allies in the east who helped us so far in the fight against ISIL, if Assad remains in power and eventually wins his civil war.
But that's the point of kicking the can down the road. The best that can be said is that perhaps the horse will sing.
