White House ‘welcomes’ State Department dissent on Syria

“The administration welcomes a strong deliberation on the foreign policy challenges that face our nation,” White House spokeswoman Jen Friedman told reporters traveling to New Mexico with President Obama on Air Force One Friday. “We are always open to new and different ideas when it comes to the challenges in Syria.”

Friedman said she isn’t aware that Obama has read the memo, which calls for U.S. airstrikes on forces led by Syrian leader Bashar Assad in order to stop their ongoing violations of a cease-fire in the country’s five-year civil war, and said Secretary of State John Kerry is looking forward to doing so.

The State Department made similar comments on Friday.

So far, however, the administration doesn’t seem moved to shift strategy.

“The president has always been clear that he does not see a military solution to the crisis in Syria and that remains the case,” she said. “It’s not surprising that there would be a diversity of opinions on how best to achieve our goals in Syria.”

The memo, which the New York Times obtained from a State Department official, says American policy has been “overwhelmed” by the unrelenting violence in Syria. It calls for “a judicious use of stand-off and air weapons, which would undergird and drive a more focused and hard-nosed U.S.-led diplomatic process.”

Those signing the memo submitted it to the State Department’s “dissent channel,” an official mechanism set up during the Vietnam War to allow for the internal airing of policy disagreements without fear of reprisal. The number of signatures on the document, 51, is extremely large, if not unprecedented, according to the Times.

Friedman sidestepped a reporter’s question asking whether the White House found the airing of such widespread internal State Department discord over the president’s Syria plan embarrassing.

“This is an existing official vehicle that is in place to allow State Department employees to convey alternative views and perspectives on policy issues,” she said.

Earlier Friday afternoon, the Atlantic Council’s Frederic Hof, director of the think tank’s Rafik Hariri Center and a former special adviser for transition in Syria with the State Department, applauded those who signed the dissent cable.

In a rare, harshly critical denunciation of a key part of Obama’s foreign policy from the Atlantic Council, Hof said Assad’s “mass homicide practices” have made half of Syria safe for the Islamic State “while creating a humanitarian catastrophe and a tidal wave of humanity sweeping over the neighborhood and into Western Europe” in a flood of refugees.

While he has not seen the cable itself, Hof said Americans “should be proud that serving officials have protested” Obama’s Syria policy, which he labeled “a morally vacuous and politically bankrupt policy.”

“Press reporting suggests that those who signed the dissent have worked on aspects of Syria policy over the past several years,” he said. “No doubt they feel the moral strain of faithfully executing legal directives in support of a policy that cruelly and gratuitously leaves innocent civilians at the mercy of a mass murderer.”

He called on administration officials to try to make one last attempt to convince Obama to use the U.S. military to stop the carnage in Syria, and said Syria peace negotiations are “utterly futile as long as Assad is perfectly free to do his absolute worst to civilians.”

The 51 “loyal and effective” State Department officials who have already risked their careers to register their disagreement with the current policy should urge Obama one more time to change his policy.

“If he refuses, their choice is plain: Stand up and publicly defend the indefensible, or resign,” he said.

Hof also urged anyone in the White House tempted to question the motives of these “decent American officials” to “first pause and reflect on what these dissenters have done to restore and uphold American credibility and honor.”

“They have done us all a huge favor,” he said.