Please, Hillary, Stay Out of Syria

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


I basically have one foreign policy present that I’d like for Christmas:

  • Stay out of Syria. No troops. No “advisors.” No weapons shipments to “friendly” rebels. No no-fly zones. Nothing. If Putin wants to waste his time there, let him.

Syria is a tragedy. If I could wave a magic wand and stop the killing and the refugees and everything else, I’d do it. But there’s no magic wand, and there’s nothing within reason that the United States can do to influence the outcome of the war. So just stay out. Period. That means you, Hillary.

That said, we obviously have an interest in eliminating ISIS, and once they’ve been driven out of Iraq they’ll have to be driven out of Syria too. I don’t know what that will involve. Maybe drone attacks, maybe some super-secret special ops missions that everyone knows about. That’s fine. But stay out of the civil war. Nothing but catastrophe will come to anyone who insists on getting involved.

Fact:

Mother Jones was founded as a nonprofit in 1976 because we knew corporations and billionaires wouldn't fund the type of hard-hitting journalism we set out to do.

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2024 demands.

payment methods

Fact:

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2024 demands.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate