Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I think one of the interesting things about the Kurdish situation and about Syria in general is how quickly the Kurds and Assad actually did align. If you watched the war over the last 8 years, the Kurds and Assad have largely not fought each other. There isn't a great deal of the blood sort of lust or curdling animosity between the two, and it was actually pretty remarkable how quickly they came together. One of the things is we think we are doing best, and we try to do the best when we insert ourselves in the Middle East, but sometimes we get unintended consequences. So we have been there. We want peace, but we refuse to allow the Kurds to talk to Assad. There is a stalemated civil war that has gone on 8 years. Had we never been involved, Assad likely would have crushed the rebellion in 6 months, maybe 500,000 people wouldn't have died, maybe 3 million people wouldn't have left, and you would still have a dictator. Instead, we have 500,000 people dead, 3 million refugees, and we still have a dictator. So I think we need to question our strategy as to what our intended goal is and what ends up happening. Syria is an utter disaster but made no better by our intervention, the Saudis' intervention, and the Qataris' intervention. There is a great deal of unknowns as to whether the Sunni extremists who were supported by the Saudis, Qataris, and sometimes us would actually be more humanitarian or more for human rights than Assad is.…”