GOOD NEWS: Obama Seeks Alliance with Iran and Syria to Combat the ISIS Threat He Helped Create!

It seems like only months ago that President Obama was drawing a "Red Line" regarding Bashar Assad's Hitler-esque use of chemical weapons.

And now, his administration is reported to be considering an alliance with the Syrian dictator thanks to a complete foreign policy meltdown in Iraq.

There’s a battle raging inside the Obama administration about whether the United States ought to push away from its goal of toppling Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad and into a de facto alliance with the Damascus regime to fight ISIS and other Sunni extremists in the region.

As President Obama slowly but surely increases the U.S. military presence on the ground in Iraq, his administration is grappling with the immediate need to stop the ISIS advance and push for a political solution in Baghdad. The 3 1/2-year grinding civil war is Syria has been put on a back burner for now. Some officials inside the administration are proposing that the drive to remove Assad from power, which Obama announced as U.S. policy in 2012, be set aside, too. The focus, these officials argue, should instead be on the region’s security and stability. Governments fighting for survival against extremists should be shored up, not undermined.

A "political solution" to a Jihadist group so extreme (ISIS) that Al Qaeda cut ties with them? Good one. That's some quality Comedy Central material right there.

“Anyone calling for regime change in Syria is frankly blind to the past decade; and the collapse of eastern Syria, and growth of Jihadistan, leading to 30 to 50 suicide attacks a month in Iraq,” one senior Obama administration official who works on Iraq policy told The Daily Beast.

In effect, the American government has been in a limited partnership with the Assad regime for almost a year. The U.S., Russian, and Syrian governments made a deal last September to destroy Assad’s stockpile of chemical weapons—and relied on Damascus to account for and transport those weapons, in effect legitimizing his claim to continued power.

As far back as last December, top White House officials, including Deputy National Security Advisor Tony Blinken, have suggested that the rising threat of extremism was creating a “convergence of interests” between the U.S., Russia, and its allies in the Iranian and the Syrian governments to come to a political deal before the Islamists became too powerful.

Interesting. I hadn't realized the U.S. has allies in the genocidal Syrian regime and its Iranian puppet-masters who have pledged to wipe the Great Satan (the U.S.) and the Little Satan (Israel) from the face of the Earth. Partners!

Of course, sensible folks have yet to talk sense into the Obama administration.

... “The people who think Bashar al Assad’s regime is the answer to containing and eventually eliminating the Islamic-based threat do not understand the historic relationship between the regime and ISIS. [They] don’t understand the current relationship between Assad and ISIS and how they are working on the ground together directly and indirectly inside Syria,” Robert Ford, the recently departed U.S. ambassador to Syria, told The Daily Beast. “The people who think Assad’s regime survival is essential have not explained how his survival would solve the problem of extremism in Syria.”

Oh, it gets better.

Some administration officials are also suggesting that Iran could be a partner in a post-war Syria, helping to ensure security there during a transition period, after which Assad would negotiate his own departure.

When it comes to this administration, one has to ask: is it incompetence or evil?

As an aside, The Daily Beast's Eli Lake and Josh Rogin should be running neck-and-neck in the Pulitzer competition this year, but given that they both speak truth to power, the odds of their seeing such an award are roughly akin to me being able to sneak a pizza out of Michael Moore's mansion.


Hat tip: Moe Lane.