Fifty-one mid-level U.S. diplomats have written a dissent cable to Secretary of State John Kerry urging the Obama administration to conduct military strikes against the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to stop its “persistent violations of a cease-fire in the country’s five-year-old civil war.”
The mid-level diplomats, who have been involved in the U.S. policy toward Syria
over the past five years, believe that “a judicious use of stand-off and air weapons, would undergird and drive a more focused and hard-nosed U.S.-led diplomatic process” and would put pressure on the Assad government to negotiate with the moderate opposition.
The officers wrote that the Syrian government’s barrel bombing of civilians is the “root cause of the instability that continues to grip Syria and the broader region…The moral rationale for taking steps to end the deaths and suffering in Syria, after five years of brutal war, is evident and unquestionable. The status quo in Syria will continue to present increasingly dire, if not disastrous, humanitarian, diplomatic and terrorism-related challenges.”
The dissent cable concludes, “It is time that the United States, guided by our strategic interests and moral convictions, lead a global effort to put an end to this conflict once and for all.”