Business Insider quotes Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East Resident Senior Fellow Frederic C. Hof on the Obama administration’s Syria strategy and what it means for ISIS:
“Every barrel bomb dropped on defenseless civilians by regime helicopters is a recruiting gift to [ISIS leader] Baghdadi,” Fred Hof, a former State Department policy planner on Syria under the current White House, wrote in a recent Foreign Policy op-ed.”
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“Perhaps ISIL could be the near-term priority if the US and others were to provide rudimentary protection to Syrian civilians,” said Hof, who is now a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council.
“But to leave those civilians to the mercies of the regime and Iran while asking people to sign up to fight only ISIL is problematical at best and self-defeating at worst.”