Since everyone is suddenly an expert in Syria (mostly by just echoing what everyone else is saying), I might as well chime in my scattered thoughts:
1. The Syrian civil war is complicated.
2. The Obama Administration made a lot of really bad decisions in Syria, but because the civil war is so messy I don't think I would have done much better if I were in their shoes.
3. A lot of the "Obama should have..." commentary seems to be based on pretty wild assumptions about the U.S. military's ability to do exactly what the president wants to do and to completely control the situation in a country with numerous local factions and intervening foreign powers, each with their own agendas. (Doesn't anyone remember Iraq?)
3. A lot of the "Obama should have..." commentary seems to be based on pretty wild assumptions about the U.S. military's ability to do exactly what the president wants to do and to completely control the situation in a country with numerous local factions and intervening foreign powers, each with their own agendas. (Doesn't anyone remember Iraq?)
4. I agreed and still agree with Obama's overall strategy of trying to avoid a large-scale outright U.S. intervention in the civil war.
5. Obama's decision to put a small force in Syria was also a mistake. The mess created by their abrupt departure/movement away from the Turkish border, is just a symptom of what a bad idea it was to put them there in the first place.
6. Just because U.S. soldiers should not have been in Syria to begin with, doesn't mean that it is not a terrible idea to abruptly removing those soldiers without any forethought while giving the green light to Erdogan to come in and slaughter all the Kurds he wants.
