Defense News quotes testimony from Rafik Hariri Center Senior Fellow Frederic Hof before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on atrocities committed by the Syrian regime:
Frederic Hof, a former U.S. ambassador and adviser to Syria, said the United States has two policy options: Either try to get along with Assad or help arm and train moderate Syrian opposition.
“The position that I don’t think we want to be in is two years from now, in 2016, looking back … and saying if only we had done something in 2014,” Hof said. But he also acknowledged that building up and training Syrian opposition fighters outside of Syria would be an “extraordinarily complex and expensive plan. Building an army basically.”