The World As It Is: A Memoir of the Obama White House

by Ben Rhodes

To show Assad and the world that there would be consequences, Obama decided to publicize a decision to provide military support to the Syrian opposition—the latest iteration of the plan that Petraeus had first presented in 2012. It was an unsatisfying response, and there weren’t any volunteers to announce the plan publicly. Almost by default, the responsibility fell to me. Even though I had misgivings about our Syria policy, I was glad that we were doing something. I had also internalized a certain ethos: If there was an issue that no one wanted to talk about publicly, I would do it. I thought it was a form of leadership, given my responsibility for communications across the government. I thought it was part of my job, as Obama deserved to have someone willing to defend him. I sensed, though, that it would cost me, allowing me to be blamed for decisions I didn’t make but that others didn’t want to defend. And defend it I did: on conference calls, in televised briefings, and in long conversations with reporters. I fought with lawyers to get clearance to say that Obama had decided to provide “direct military support” to the Syrian opposition, as we were in the impossible position of not being able to discuss details about a key element of our policy. Legally, we couldn’t say what the support was; all I could say were things like “This is going to be different—in both scope and scale—in terms of what we are providing to the opposition.” I was giving partial answers about an i...