Former President Barack Obama "absolutely" should have conducted missile strikes in Syria back in 2013 following Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's chemical weapons attacks in 2013, the ex-president's campaign foreign policy adviser said Monday.
"There had only been 8,000 Syrians killed by Assad," David Tafuri, now a partner for the Dentons law firm in Washington D.C., told Fox News' "Fox and Friends" program. "That was tragic then. We have 60 times that who have been killed now; almost 500,000 Syrians are dead."
Had the United States conducted airstrikes or military strikes in 2013, it would have "sent a message to Assad that we weren't going to let him engage in the most heinous acts towards his own civilians, including the barrel bombs and chemical weapons attacks, we might have averted some of those attacks and put him more in a a box," Tafuri said. "I certainly agree we should have done it back then."
However, Tafuri, who served as the State Department's rule of law coordinator for Iraq at the Baghdad embassy, pointed out that back in 2013, Trump himself also did not agree that Syria should come under attack.
"He tweeted several times we should not attack Syria in 2013," said Tafuri. "He was wrong then. He is right now."
Tactical missile strikes and airstrikes can have a "real impact" on dictators such as Assad, Tafuri said.
"It worked in Kosovo to get them to back off on genocide," Tafuri said. "I think it's going to have an impact in Syria not because so much of the strikes we did already, but because Assad is worried [about] what we will do next."
Tafuri said he also agrees that Assad must not remain in office, and pointed out that was a policy of the Obama administration as well.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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