Ford: I couldn’t defend U.S. Syria policy.

Finally, Ambassador Ford can say what he has probably been itching to say for many long months. The Obama Administration’s Syria policy is indefensible. It has served to empower Assad, Al-Qaeda, Iran and Russia, and, in the process, it rolled the clock back to Cold War times. Who gives a damn about killing Bin Ladin long after he had become an irrelevant figure, and at a time when the Administration’s foreign policies, and non-policies, and its reliance on drone attacks as its sole instrument for fighting terrorism, have served to give Al-Qaeda new havens in Syria and Yemen, among other places, as well as a new set of leaders, and has actually managed, despite the ideological divide between them, to foster an emerging and strong cooperation between Al-Qaeda affiliated groups and the regimes in Iran and Syria. Yet, according to President Barack Obama, we should somehow see wisdom, and even victory, in all these developments. Meanwhile, human rights activists like me are now castigated as warmongers because we demand that genocidal maniacs be stopped, and for Al-Qaeda, Hezbollah and other terrorist entities and groups be seriously fought, not just pricked.