Everyone from Hillary Clinton to organizations like Coptic Solidarity in the Middle East have criticized President Obama's policies in Syria and Iraq as "too little, too late." Many believe that if the president had made better decisions earlier, much of the terror ISIL militants have been able to reap across Syria and Iraq could have been avoided.
The case has been made since the Syrian conflict began, by foreign policy leaders in both parties and several members of Obama's senior national security team, and now voiced publicly by Senator Bob Corker and even Hillary Clinton, that America should have done more in Syria earlier.
Many called for arming rebel groups in Syria after the conflict worsened in 2011-2012, but the Obama administration chose not to take that tactic.
Senator Corker wrote a blistering op-ed for The Washington Post criticizing Obama's handling of foreign policy, just a few days after he reportedly tried to address it with the president personally.
"Today, after three years of bold rhetoric divorced from reality, 170,000 Syrians are dead, and we are not innocent bystanders. The president encouraged the opposition to swallow deadly risks, then left them mostly hanging," the Republican senator wrote. "Extremist groups from Syria have surged into Iraq, seizing key territory and resources, and are threatening to completely undo the progress of years of U.S. sacrifice."
Top Democratic lawmakers agreed with Corker and Clinton that doing more to support the moderate rebels would have at least had a chance of mitigating the current crisis, which has now spread to large parts of Iraq as ISIL expands its newly declared Caliphate.
On Tuesday, Leaders of the group Coptic Solidarity, who strive to help create equal rights for Coptic Christians and other minorities in the middle east, called the US airstrikes and humanitarian aid as self-serving.
"Coptic Solidarity condemns the grossly inadequate and slow response by the international community to the ongoing genocide and humanitarian crisis in Iraq driven by ISIL Jihadists against religious and ethnic minorities." According to a statement issued by the group.
"The founding words of the United Nations, "Never Again" ring hollow as the UN and powerful member states lack the willpower to intervene and stop the genocide of religious minorities, yet again."
Coptic Solidarity believes President Obama's reaction to the growing crisis, by authorizing limited air strikes last week to defend "American interests" in Iraq, and bolster the threatened Kurdish region, and deliver some humanitarian aid is "woefully inadequate". They claim It falls far short of what the catastrophic situation on the ground requires, and they want the US to do more to respond.
"The West has blood on its hands by its past actions and inactions that helped "create" the current situation. Leaders of the international community bear responsibility for the agony and deaths of thousands of innocent men, women, and children. Now is the time for immediate action, not for more empty, feel-good, statements and posturing by the international community," The group's statement concludes.
Since civil war broke out in Syria back in 2011, the White House has largely remained on the sidelines of the conflict, providing mostly non-lethal aid to rebels. President Obama has said in the past that the idea that doing more might have had different results is "pure fantasy", and he has given no indication that he plans to make any drastic changes to his policies at this point.
