Syrian-American activists cornered Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes Wednesday night to plead with him to support a no-fly zone in Syria to help protect civilians.
“I told him that his opposition to the no-fly zone was the reason that our families are refugees and that Syrians are being killed every day,” Omar Hossino, spokesman for the Syrian American Council, told the Washington Examiner about his encounter with Rhodes.
Rhodes is the adviser to President Obama whose interview with the New York Times has put the Obama administration on the defensive anew about the Iran deal. Hossino said Rhodes essentially shot down his request.
“I told him he needed to do more against both [Syrian President Bashar] Assad and [the Islamic State],” Hossino recounted. “He had no response except to say, ‘I wish it was so easy’ and that he appreciates my ‘candor.’ I told him it was very easy but they refuse to do it, which is emboldening Assad.”
Hossino’s Syrian American Council and other Syrian human rights groups have begged the Obama administration to establish no-fly zones and/or safe zones to shield civilians from the Assad regime’s barrel bombs and chemical warfare.
Exasperated, they apparently took out their frustration on Rhodes as they attended the Muslim Public Affairs Council’s annual dinner in Washington, during which the organization named Rhodes one of its seven “outstanding leaders” of 2016.
“We aren’t proud of our Syria policy, but we don’t have any good options … nothing we could have done would have made things better,” Rhodes reportedly told the activists, according to three accounts given to the Daily Beast. “We’re not the ones killing Syrians,” he continued. “Assad is the one killing people.”
A National Security Council spokesman said that Rhodes’ empathizing with Syrian civilians was not a rebuke of the administration’s policy.
“Ben in no way indicted or distanced himself from our Syria policy,” Ned Price, an NSC spokesman, told the Examiner. “He has consistently explained U.S. policy toward the conflict, which is what he did in this case.”
“What is true is that he lamented the level of suffering the Syrian people have endured,” Price stated.
President Obama has repeatedly dismissed calls for no-fly and safe zones, saying that the U.S.’s military interest in Syria is combating the self-proclaimed Islamic State, not Assad.
“And typically, after we’ve gone through a lot of planning and a lot of discussion, and really working it through, it is determined that it would be counterproductive to take those steps — in part because ISIL does not have planes,” Obama said Nov. 16, explaining his rationale for again rebuffing calls for a no-fly zone during a press conference in Turkey shortly after the Sunni terrorist group he refers to as ISIL attacked Paris.
“Ben has repeatedly made the point that the United States will continue to do everything we can, in concert with our international partners, to alleviate the suffering of the Syrian people,” Price continued.
Rhodes “also explained, as he has done publicly many times before, why we have not pursued additional military action against Assad, including a no-fly zone,” Price stated. “We see no military solution to the civil war. We all acknowledge the tremendous suffering of the Syrian people, and no one should be satisfied with the status quo. That’s why we continue to work toward a transition away from Assad just as we prosecute a relentless campaign against ISIL.”
