More than 50 State Department diplomats have signed an internal memo sharply critical of the Obama administration's policy in Syria, urging the United States to carry out military strikes against the government of President Bashar Assad to stop its persistent violations of a cease-fire in the country's five-year-old civil war.
The memo, a draft of which was provided to The New York Times by a State Department official, says US policy has been "overwhelmed" by the unrelenting violence in Syria. The memo calls for "a judicious use of standoff and air weapons, which would undergird and drive a more focused and hard-nosed US-led diplomatic process."
Such a step would represent a radical shift in the administration's approach to the civil war in Syria, and there is little evidence that President Barack Obama has plans to change course. Obama has emphasized the military campaign against the Islamic State over efforts to dislodge Assad. Diplomatic efforts to end the conflict, led by Secretary of State John Kerry, have all but collapsed.
But the memo, filed in the State Department's "dissent channel," underscores the deep rifts and lingering frustration within the administration over how to deal with a war that has killed more than 400,000 people.
The State Department set up the channel during the Vietnam War as a way for employees who had disagreements with policies to register their protest with the secretary of state and other top officials, without fear of reprisal. While dissent cables are not that unusual, the number of signatures on this document, 51, is extremely large, if not unprecedented.
The names on the memo are almost all midlevel officials — many of them career diplomats — who have been involved in the administration's Syria policy over the last five years, at home or abroad. They range from a Syria desk officer in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs to a former deputy to the US ambassador in Damascus.
"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 memo read.
