The National Journal quotes Rafik Hariri Center Senior Fellow Frederic Hof on US Strategy toward Syria and Iraq:
There are, however, indications that the administration is tossing its playbook, rethinking its approach, and beginning to see the problems in Iraq and Syria as linked. Obama on Thursday called on Congress to approve $500 million to train moderate rebels in Syria. “What they really ought to be doing is looking at this problem in a broader dimension in Iraq and Syria,” said Frederic Hof, who was Obama’s special adviser on Syria and is now with the Atlantic Council. “Fending off attacks [in Iraq] is not enough.”
Hof, too, mentioned the kind of dirty work that needs to be done by Obama in Syria—to try to “very, very carefully” focus on the thousands of defectors and deserters from the Syrian army to put together a national resistance force to battle ISIS and move toward regime change in that country. ISIS could then conceivably be pinned down between Damascus and Baghdad.