Palestinian Authority guy: Obama's "misguided in giving impression that Assad should survive the rebellion ..."

"... Without question the most troublesome policy of all has been the Obama administration’s risk-averse approach to the Syrian uprising. The administration has been misguided in giving the impression that it believes that Bashar al-Assad’s regime either will, or possibly even should, survive the rebellion. In the long run, this is both unlikely and, for American interests, undesirable.

It’s true that there isn’t much the United States can do on its own beyond rhetoric to influence events in Syria, and that there is much to fear from chaos or civil war in that country. But a policy that continues to toss out lifelines and implicit reaffirmation to a regime that should and probably will eventually collapse under the weight of its own dysfunctionality and brutality (remember, he works for Mahmoud Abbas)—and which is historically and currently unfriendly to American policy goals—makes little sense.

But even the so-far misguided approach to Syria that seems to irrationally favor some form of regime continuity to the potential for internal chaos does not bespeak a “new isolationism” in American foreign policy. It is overly cautious to be sure, and excessively risk-averse. But it is not a return to fortress America by any means..."