For the most part, there were no surprises: Donald Trump railed against Muslims<\/a>, Chris Christie lamented that the NSA can\u2019t intercept Americans\u2019 phone calls<\/a> and emails as easily as it used to, Ben Carson remained confused about foreign policy, and Carly Fiorina yelled loudly<\/a> that nobody was paying any attention to her.<\/p>\n That\u2019s great entertainment. But one ongoing theme bothered me \u2013 a lot.<\/p>\n It seemed to me that none of the Republicans running for president had even the vaguest understanding of what\u2019s happening in Syria.<\/p>\n I learned during my nearly 15 years of working on the Middle East at the CIA \u2013 and after earning my college degree in Middle Eastern Studies \u2013 that nothing in that region is easily accomplished. Almost no issues are black and white. Alliances shift constantly, and sometimes politics makes for strange bedfellows.<\/p>\n Syria is no exception.<\/p>\n Gage Skidmore \/ Flickr<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The debate theme was basically this: The Islamic State is bad, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is bad, and \u201cmoderate\u201d Syrian rebels are good. In a perfect world, that would indeed be the case. But it\u2019s not a perfect world, and that\u2019s not the reality of Syria today.<\/p>\n Certainly, we can all agree that the Islamic State is a dangerous and desperate terrorist group that must be stopped. But at what cost? Why is it up to the United States to send troops to fight a foreign civil war?<\/p>\n We\u2019ve been at war for the past 14 years in that part of the world. Isn\u2019t it time to stop fighting over there?<\/p>\n And what of Assad? He\u2019s a ruthless dictator, to be sure. And the civil war he helped set in motion has claimed the lives of more than 200,000 of his own countrymen<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 and forced\u00a0nearly\u00a012 million<\/a>\u00a0more\u00a0to flee their\u00a0homes as\u00a0refugees or internally displaced people within Syria.<\/p>\n But he\u2019s also the only one protecting religious minorities like Alawites, Druze, and Christians in Syria \u2013 the latter of whom make up about 10 percent of the population<\/a>, including notable minorities in both the Syrian parliament and cabinet. Unlike many people elsewhere in the region, Syrians of all traditions were generally free to practice their faith before the war began.<\/p>\n This also used to be the case in Iraq under Saddam Hussein, despite his own ruthlessness. By now most Iraqi Christians have fled the country. Church leaders have been kidnapped and murdered<\/a>. And you\u2019re more likely to meet an Iraqi Christian in Detroit than in Baghdad.<\/p>\n And those \u201cmoderate\u201d rebels? Maybe a few are freedom-loving secularists. But many more are hardcore Islamists like the al-Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front. They aren\u2019t any more interested in democracy than Assad or the Islamic State itself.<\/p>\n There is, however, a solution. And it doesn\u2019t involve killing more people, stumbling into other countries\u2019 civil wars, or \u201ccarpet bombing<\/a>\u201d the Middle East, as Ted Cruz proposed. It\u2019s called diplomacy<\/em>.<\/p>\n The United States has national security interests in Syria: We want to stop the Islamic State. The Russians and Iranians have interests, too: They want to support and protect their friend Assad. The Turks have an interest in protecting their border. The Jordanians have an interest in resettling Syrian refugees back in Syria.<\/p>\n Doesn\u2019t it make sense, then, to call for peace talks that would include Moscow, Damascus, Amman, and other regional capitals? Doesn\u2019t it make sense for the international community to work together to bring peace and stability back to the region?<\/p>\n Assad is no choir boy. But we should be talking to him, too. There\u2019s no dealing with the Islamic State while this war is still underway.<\/p>\n The post The GOP Candidates Know Nothing about Syria<\/a> appeared first on OtherWords<\/a>.<\/p>\n This piece was reprinted from Other Words<\/a> by RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission.<\/p>\n![\"Ted-Cruz-shrugging-shrug-clueless-GOP-candidate-republican-presidential\"](\"http:\/\/otherwords.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/Ted-Cruz-Shrugging-600x400.jpg\")
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