MSNBC's "Morning Joe" panel on Monday castigated the Obama administration's response to the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Aleppo, Syria, calling it a "chapter" the president "will not want to read" years from now.
Civilians have been evacuating Aleppo after the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad effectively took the city from rebels fighting in the country's conflict, which is in its sixth year and has killed over 400,000 people.
Panelists on "Morning Joe" agreed that the Obama administration's lack of action in Syria has not only stained the president's legacy but also caused a shift in how America's allies view its strength.
"That's a legacy, Elise, of America and the West. We sit back and do absolutely nothing," co-host Joe Scarborough said to MSNBC analysts Elise Jordan, watching footage of evacuations from Aleppo. "Is this not what the world looks like when America does nothing?"
"You see how the pendulum swung in that direction of inaction, and this is the horrible result of it," Jordan said. "I think that there was that critical moment where Obama could have acted, and it was a very small window at the end of 2011 when these uprisings started, and our half-measures really made the situation a whole lot worse."
The Obama administration has insisted that military action will not solve the situation in Syria. The Syrian regime has worked with Russian and Iranian forces to bomb Aleppo, and pro-Assad forces have reportedly burned alive and raped civilians in the city. The president said his administration's efforts to help stop the conflict were unsuccessful at a press conference last week, but he stood by his decision to not intervene, telling reporters, "I continue to believe it was the right approach given what realistically we could get done."
"This is the chapter of the Obama administration that President Obama will not want to read," columnist Mike Barnicle said on Monday. "This is the chapter of the Obama administration that will spell out as history unfolds, perhaps in detail, the divisions within the Obama administration, where you had, we're told, the secretary of state wanting to be much more aggressive in terms of doing something to assist the people of Aleppo."
Barnicle went on to say that although the administration knew of the bombings, assassinations, and systematic starvation targeting residents in Aleppo, nothing was done.
The panel agreed that not intervening with some military force will affect how the rest of the world views America.
"When Barack Obama demonstrated that he would not draw the line in the sand, the world responded accordingly, and our adversaries, they responded accordingly," Jordan said, mentioning the recent Russian hacking. Scarborough then referred to the U.S. underwater research drone that China seized in the China South Sea last week.
"It's every measure. They know our people don't fear us the way they have in the past," Jordan said.