Biden: "Not a single, solitary recommendation" in diplomats' slam of Syria policy
Source: CBS
In an interview with "CBS This Morning" co-host Charlie Rose, Vice President Joe Biden addressed criticism by the 51 career diplomats who slammed the Obama administration's Syria policy last week and called for a new one that would take more aggressive action against Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad.
"The president and I and previous presidents support the right of any diplomat to have a secure channel to voice a different view," Biden said. "But there is not a single, solitary recommendation that I saw that has a single, solitary answer attached to it -- how to do what they're talking about."
According to CBS News' Margaret Brennan, the unprecedented, classified internal cable does not make specific policy recommendations such as U.S. airstrikes, but comes close, arguing Assad's artillery and air power must be removed as threats to the U.S.-backed rebels.
"The president's been fastidious -- calls the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the intelligence community, the director of central intelligence, the C.I.A., et cetera. 'Tell me what will work. Will this work?' And the answer has repeatedly been, 'No,'" Biden said.
Read more: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/vice-president-joe-biden-state-department-criticism-obama-administration-syria-policy-dictators/
WheelWalker
(8,956 posts)UCmeNdc
(9,601 posts)Why is it so important to remove Assad?
Who will fill this power vacuum?
Will the removal of Assad help or hurt the interests of the United States? Why?
There are no real easy answers but just to remove Assad for the sake of removing him is stupid and allowing militant Islamic organizations to fill in the power vacuum is incompetency.
Javaman
(62,534 posts)game of thrones and all that.
hack89
(39,171 posts)besides the fact that he is slaughtering his own people.
Iran is providing over half of Assad's ground troops. Hezbollah is also a huge factor as they fight for Assad - removing Assad would also ensure that Hezbollah does not grow stronger.
IthinkThereforeIAM
(3,078 posts)... a pipeline to the Mediterranean sea/eastern Europe is what they want. Assad wants his cut, they do not want to pay Assad/Syria any passage fees, etc...
MisterP
(23,730 posts)Response to MisterP (Reply #4)
Skittles This message was self-deleted by its author.
bemildred
(90,061 posts)An internal cable signed by more than 50 State Department officials objecting to the Obama administrations policy on Syria is particularly worrisome, according to experts, given Hillary Clintons hawkish foreign policy positions and her stated plan to escalate President Barack Obamas war in Syria if elected.
The cable itself was leaked to major news outlets, including the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, both of which carried frontpage stories on its implications Friday morning.
The memo, sent through an official dissent channel within the State Department, includes repeated calls for targeted military strikes against the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad and expressions of frustration that Obama has resisted deeper military engagement amid peace talk efforts that have produced little progress over recent months.
It puts forth moral rationale for such calls, saying [t]he status quo in Syria will continue to present increasingly dire, if not disastrous, humanitarian, diplomatic and terrorism-related challenges.
http://www.ips-dc.org/irony-leaked-memo-syria-diplomats-calling-military-escalation/
bemildred
(90,061 posts)Washington (CNN)Vice President Joe Biden suggested in an interview this week he was right and President Barack Obama and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton were wrong when it came to intervening in Libya.
Speaking with Charlie Rose, Biden said he argued "strongly against going to Libya" ahead of the 2011 U.S. intervention that toppled dictator Moammar Gadhafi, saying he predicted the instability that has followed.
"My question was, 'OK, tell me what happens.' He's gone. What happens? Doesn't the country disintegrate? What happens then? Doesn't it become a place where it becomes a Petri dish for the growth of extremism?" Biden said. "And it has."
That stance put Biden at odds with Clinton, now the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. Clinton argued forcefully for intervention in Libya, eventually convincing Obama to take robust action there. She has defended that argument, saying no U.S. troops were put at risk.
http://us.cnn.com/2016/06/21/politics/joe-biden-hillary-clinton-libya/index.html