Faculty In The News: Is Syria The New Iraq?
GAI Senior Fellow Charles Cushman joined a panel of international experts on the Voice of Russia radio program to talk about the escalating violence in Syria, and the options for US involvement.
Dr. Cushman opened the program by laying out one of the major differences between 2003 and 2013: “No, Obama has made enormous efforts to demonstrate to the American public and to the world that he is not George W. Bush. That said, a lot of the same voices that were raised supporting a move against Iraq a decade ago are making the same speeches about Syria now. So he does face a lot of the same sort of public pressures here in Washington to do the same thing that Bush did back then. There’s maybe some parallels with Kerry and Powell, and that could cause the president a great deal of trouble, because he may feel that he’s backed into a corner and in order to support his people he may get dragged into something he doesn’t really want to do.”