Frank Gaffney: ‘If Assad Must Go, What Do We Want There Next?’

This article comes from Breitbart.com

by John Hayward

Frank Gaffney, Center for Security Policy president, joined SiriusXM host Alex Marlow on Wednesday’s Breitbart News Daily to discuss Gaffney’s warning that things can get worse in Syria.

“The Syria situation is one that is fraught with peril, as I see it, for the United States at this particular moment in time,” Gaffney explained. “Because President Trump seems sorely tempted – and I think that tempting is not simply a function of the usual suspects, people who have been horrified by the humanitarian crisis there, the people there who think that it will be resolved, or at least diminished, by bringing Heaven knows how many refugees from Syria here and the like – but now from his own national security team that we must get involved, we must inject ourselves into the crisis in Syria.”

“I think that’s folly,” he said. “It’s not because I’m indifferent to the suffering of the people there. It’s that I don’t see a good solution for, frankly, either the people of Syria or their neighbors or for us by making America part of this civil war.”

Gaffney said his specific concern is that “the idea that Assad is Hitler or something akin to him and must go, and Russia must help with that, raises, inevitably, the question: so what do we want there next?”

“The choices, unfortunately, seem to be more of the same. At best, it’s an Assad-Lite, supported by the Russians, supported presumably by the Iranians, supported by Hezbollah. Or, alternatively, it’s sharia supremacists of the Sunni stripe supported by the Saudis, supported by the Turks, supported by perhaps al-Qaeda or the Islamic State, or simply the Muslim Brotherhood. All very bad choices, in my judgment,” he said.

Gaffney noted Russia has some concrete interests in Syria, including a warm-water port in the Mediterranean.

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