About president obamas legacy on syria and the Trump Administration moving forward. Thispress conference afternoon, secretary mattis says isis remains the target. Joining me is tony blinken, the former Deputy National security adviser for president obama. Joining me here is bret stephens, a columnist for the wall street journal. I want to begin with a column that got a lot of attention. The price of obamas mendacity. Theres always this debate about the wisdom of Barack Obamas decision to forgo a similar strike in 2013. Thats the beginning. Mr. Obama and his advisers will never run out of self justifications for their policy in syria. They cant out run responsibility for the consequences of their lies. After president obama, kerryent putin, and john went through the agreement for syria to ban the stockpile of chemical weapons, information began to emerge that the syrians were cheating on the agreement. It started filtering out in 2014. The wall street journal had a frontpage story on the fact in 2015. Even16, jim clapper acknowledged it to a congressional committee. Throughout the entire period, however, leading figures of the Obama Administration, including the president , secretary of state, and susan rice kept insisting that the Obama Administration, that the deal had gotten 100 of the chemical weapons out, creating an , by the way,hich the Trump Administration seemed beenare that assad had defanged of its most dangerous weapons. What we have seen in Northern Syria is that was untrue. , howe to ask mr. Blinken is it that the Obama Administration kept saying that 100 of the weapons, without qualification, when they knew from their own sources that it was not the case, that assad was cheating on the deal, that he maintained the stockpile and the ability to use it. Charlie the second part is the russians should have known, and what is their complicity . Of course the russians were complicit. One of the things that is most disturbing is you have russians on these airbases where the weapons are being stored. The question about russian mendacity isnt even interesting. The russians live. The russians lie. What disturbs me is the Obama Administration offered a story which simply wasnt true, but which they should have known, or did know was not true. Tony first, i very much admire a lot of what you have written in defense of the truth, but here i think he is barking up the wrong tree. Lets rewind the tape. We faced this horrific situation in 2013 with this chemical weapons attack in syria. We were prepared to use force. We went to congress to see if we could get authority. That got bogged down. Then the russians came in and decided to broker a deal by which the syrians declared all the chemical weapons they had, agreed to give them up and destroy them in a verifiable way. They declared 1300 tons of chemicals and infrastructure. A year later, the group charged with mitering the destruction of hadchemicals said they destroyed the declared weapons. Heres where the discrepancy is. We knew all along, and we said publicly, repeatedly, we were concerned there were gaps between what they declared and what they actually had. We went repeatedly to the u. N. And the russians to press the syrians on those gaps to make sure we got everything we could. But if you go back and look at virtually all the statements, we were referring to the declared capabilities, and we raised concerns. Heres the thing. Imagine if we had not done this deal. We could not have struck the chemical weapons. That would have created a chemical cloud that would have place and the people we were trying to protect. Instead, we were able to get everything we know about that was declared out of the country. Every single country in the region was better off. Israel had been giving gas masks to his people before the deal, afraid of the strategic attack by syria. After the deal was struck, they program. Hat they told our ambassador that what we achieved was far more effective than had we actually used force against airfields. Deal,hadnt done that 1300 tons of chemical weapons would still be floating around syria, not only in the hands of the assad regime, but potentially the Islamic State, alnusra, and other terrorist groups. Are we manifestly better off because we did it . Yes. This the imperfections of deal are becoming apparent in the deaths of innocent victims. Said, we the president had 100 of the weapons. He didnt say we have 100 of the declared stop and by the way we have concerns. I dont remember. You probably dont remember the president going to congress and ringing alarm bells that the shar assad Bashar Alassad was in violation of the agreements. John kerry said 100 of the weapons every now and then you would hear secondtier Administration Officials raise alarms and use the word declared, which is a lawyerly way of acknowledging these discrepancies. That theyyone say seriously remember a major theme of the Obama Administrations second term was pointing to the discrepancy between what was declared and what we knew about . Blinken might be right that getting out those tons of sarin and other poisons but therese price, one argument to be had about the wisdom. I think it was a very unwise a signal that american red lines were useless and prevented us from carrying out retaliatory strikes once we was violatingd the deal. What im questioning is the honesty. Fact is the Obama Administration cannot say with a that nobodyght face noticed it was trumpeting the discrepancy between what assad was supposed to have done and what he actually did. The administration allowed the deal to be violated. The question is why. I would love to hear mr. Blinken talk about this. I suspect it is because you are achieving a deal with serious , wasn state, a run iran so important that it did not want to rock this boat. Learnto hear the more about the influence of the , on obamas unwillingness to expose the extent to which assad was violating the deal. Tony apples and oranges. One had nothing to do with the other. Theres no relationship with what we did in syria and the ongoing support for that agreement, even if we try to close the gaps and find discrepancies, and doing the a iran deal. Thats the truth. I come to this proposition. Dont compare me to the almighty, compare me to the alternative. Force, notwas to use strike any of the chemical , and instead use diplomacy without firing a shot to get far more of the chemical weapons out then we could have had we used force. Thats a good deal. Bret its not. You had an option to destroy the syrian air force. You had an option, even if the chemical weapons were not destroyed, to destroy the means by which assad would be capable andelivering those weapons, later, weapons like barrel bombs, chlorine gases, responsible for a level of destruction that i think is so vast that the u. N. Has stopped counting how many people are dead in syria. That is also the consequence of the refusal to act in syria. You are suggesting that our only military option would have been , dangerous chernobyl type event on syrian airbases. , what thest showed Trump Administration just showed, its possible to destroy the means of delivery without putting civilians at risk by destroying those weapons. I think it is such a shame that four years ago 100,000 deaths ago, the Obama Administration failed to act that way. Tony as you know, bret, early on in the were, before they used the air force, 90 of syrian aggression was coming from rockets, shells, mortars, including chemical ammunition. Had we taken them out of the sky, they would go back to that. Then we would have had to stop that. It would have drawn us in further and further. It is reasonable to say we made the wrong judgment and we should have gone in, but that was the judgment we made. It would not have stopped them from using chemical weapons. Charlie isnt that the heart of the weapon, the president did not want to be drawn into the civil war . Ony i think it is but the specific issue in 2013 was chemical weapons. A norm that was violated, a norm that was established after world and as horrific as everything in syria was, this went a step further and violating something the International Community said could not have been happen after world war i. Bret you failed to do so. The president made a clear military threat which he failed to honor, and it caused consternation in the region and around the world. A created the perception that president obama was a guy, who in the event of the use of chemical weapons, would give an eloquent speech and find some kind of facesaving solution. Charlie let me bring this to where we are now. The former ambassador robert ford was a guest. Heres what he said. My own sense is that the war in syria was already finished, and assad won. We are not going to get into a new iraq and of war or a new afghanistan war. There may be some are fighting for another year or two, oppositions will not give up, but they will not win. Assad is going to win. Bret first of all, im not sure i agree with ambassador for that if assad remains in power that the fighting stops. So long as assad remains in power, sunnis will rise up to oppose him. Hes not that strong, even with the help of the russians. What i am convinced of is that as complicated and anthony is right as complicated as syria is, there is no solution in syria while he remains president of the country. Tony heres the challenge, if i could. End . O civil wars and . We have looked at this intensively. Either one side wins i agree i dont think its possible. Second, they fight to exhaustion. Historically it has taken 10 years. We are in year seven of this war. Rd, they negotiate with and heres where the judgment comes in. There are legitimate differences in judgment. Third, some kind of outside intervention that combines some element of military force and diplomacy. A legitimate criticism of the administration is there may have been moments when we could have married more leverage to the diplomacy, but no one, not the russians, not the iranians, not us, not any outside patrons, where willing to go in to win the war for one side of the or the other. That did not happen and it will not happen. Bret we keep insisting syria ought to remain a unitary state. We insisted yugoslavia emerge as a unitary state, people would be fighting there today. It makes no sense for anyone to of syriate the future in which there is one syrian state. Why . As long as its one syria, it will always be a zerosum struggle for power. It will be one side winning and the other side losing. That neednt be the case in syria. You could have an alawite state centered around the coastal cities, kurdish lands could end up charlie led by Bashar Alassad . Bret all allied states led by anyone other than Bashar Alassad. That should be a condition. You should be able to take part of the kurdish areas and create another autonomous zone , as we protected the kurds in northern iraq, all thanks to a nofly zone, thanks to american limited military intervention. Charlie that is a longterm solution. But you seem to agree with general mattis, the first star get the first target is to eliminate isis. Is evil incarnate, but it is not the kind of strategic threat to the United States or our allies in the region that assad is or will be if he remains in power and creates a nexus between tehran, damascus, beirut with hezbollah, and moscow. Charlie people continue to say you cannot have another station unless you have leverage on the ground. Where is leverage on the ground coming from . Tony i think we do have leverage now. Part is the result of the strike that the Trump Administration took. The question is, are they prepared to use it . Charlie is that the history on strikes like this . One of strikes create that kind of shift in behavior, or tony you are right, oneoff doesnt. You have to have a strategy. It has to have all the elements associated with a strategy including a clear diplomatic play. I hope that is what the administration is coming to. Bret may be right that ultimately there will be some kind of partition, but lets not kid ourselves on how challenging that would be. Theres also a possible kurdish autonomous region. Our friends in turkey are not going to be enthusiastic about that. It wont be easy to do anything there. You will have statements statelets at each others throats repeatedly. You will have some controlled by isil or the nusra front. It may well be that that is where this goes, but we should not under its underestimate how challenging it will be, and how imperfect that will be. Bret as we contemplate a variety of imperfect solutions, lets not lose sight of the fact that what we have now is almost like a Hurricane Sandy in place, selling destruction in syria and chaos among all of its neighbors. You now have repeated isis attacks in turkey. You know how jordan straining under the weight of more than one million refugees. You had the implosion of the state system in the middle east. Russian power entrenching itself once again. The refugee crisis. All the while we are saying, this is hard and difficult. Whats even more difficult is the consequence of inaction. John kerry,k, annemarie slaughter, senior figures in the Obama Administration, have both come out and praised the strike. Why do you think they are praising it if they werent in fact dissidents within the Obama Administration of the policy that you guys ultimately pursued . There was a lot of unhappiness inside the Obama Administration for the failure to act in 2013 and for the absolutely handsoff bugaboo, as on the you put it, we put one toe in, and the whole body is in the water. Charlie and also the idea of leverage, because kerry was not successful in the negotiation with the russians. But my understanding is you said you supported the strike, but now is the time for diplomacy . Tony yes. I came out immediately, at a lesser level than john kerry or others, in support of what the Trump Administration did. It was the right thing to do. Question is whether theres followthrough, whether theres a way to use this to make progress. Question. You have to look at everything in the context of its time at the moment. Going back to 2013, the decision before us was whether to strike, not hit the chemicals, not destroy them, or do the diplomacy, which we ended up doing, and get rid of the chemicalstockpile of weapons. Every country in the region is better off, and everyone is better off, as horrific as things remain. As bad as syria is today, syria with 18 hundred tons of chemical weapons in the hands of the Islamic State and assad would be even worse. Charlie was there no way you get rid worse both, of chemical weapons and maintain the option of the airstrike . Tony heres the question. It is a decision and question before anyone faced with these kinds of situations. You take a strike, and then the target not only doesnt respond that keeps on with bad behavior. Everyone says ok, better take another strike. He still doesnt respond. He continues with the bad behavior. Better do it again. And again and again. In ay soon, you are caught cycle where you dont control the escalation, then you wind up getting drawn further and further in. Anyone was responsible has to factor that in. Bret let me ask you, lets assume you are right and getting those 1300 tons of chemical weapons out of syria was worth wasdiplomatic bargain, worth the racing the red line. But then theres an expectation that the declared stockpile is the real stockpile and that violations will be punished. You had three and a half years to punish violations. At least two of those years you knew that assad was violating the deal, and yet nothing was done. My question is why not . Tony two things. First, there are two kinds of violations. One is a question of whether there were gaps between what they declared and held onto. We were pushing on that every day. We were working through the organization for the prohibition of chemical weapons, the u. N. , and the russians. The syrians made four amendments to their declaration over that time acknowledging more stuff they originally said they didnt have. We thought we were getting at it that way. Imperfect, but we were making progress. The second question is the fact that even after the agreement, they continued to use chemical weapons, but not sarin. They used chlorine. Is congregated. Chlorine in and of itself is not a prohibited weapon. We were pressing on that too. It is of a different nature. Bret i guess my misgiving is when you use the word complicated. That is complicated may be from the standpoint of lawyers dealing with International Legal niceties. Its not complicated from the standpoint of the people in villages and towns underneath chemical bonds, being wiped out in full view of the world while an american president decides hes not going to do anything about this because of the possibility that action and health consequences. Tony there wasnt an action. There was action that you think was misguided, and that is a perfectly reasonable argument. The action was unclear. There was a diplomatic enforcement of getting chemical weapons at. We had significant success. We got the declared weapons out. We got 1300 tons out. We know that. We know syria would be a more horrific place today if they were still there in the hands of the Islamic State, nusra, and the assad regime. All the countries in the middle east, syria would be a more dangerous country. There was a result. There was progress. Buts profoundly imperfect, heres the point that i acknowledge. Any of us who had any responsibility for our Foreign Policy during this period will have to live with the fact that we didnt and the syrian war, and the fact that hundreds of thousands of syrians are dead. And onalso on our watch, the watch of syrians, and every neighbor. It is to gores plenty of blame around. As the leading country in the share we should take the of it. Is,e i do disagree with you question judgments, absolutely. Lets have that argument. But talking about mendacity, you are looking in the wrong place. Bret history will