Please, Hillary, Stay Out of Syria

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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.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

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