SOFREP Sunday Cartoon: Syria and the “What Could go Wrong?” School of Thought

The Confident Step Forward

There is something almost admirable about our generic official striding toward the edge of doom with paperwork in hand and a shrug on his face. Confidence like that does not come from certainty. It comes from insulation. Today’s cartoon skewers a random general in Washington, the decision-maker who mistakes decisiveness for wisdom and treats caution as a bureaucratic speed bump. The warning voice behind him is not ignored out of malice. It is ignored because the decision is already emotionally complete. Asking questions at that point is just noise.

Gravity Does Not Care About Intent

Below the cliff is not an enemy formation or a solvable problem set. It is Syrian infighting, drawn as fire and chaos because that is what it has been for years. Multiple factions, foreign patrons, proxy wars, shifting loyalties, and no clean exits. Stepping into it with a vanilla “Plan A” is like betting your house on a weather forecast written in pencil. You can believe in it as hard as you want. Gravity still works the same way when your foot leaves the ground.

Walking Off the Same Cliff Again

The caption sends the real message. “Again.” This is not a one-off lapse in judgment. It is a pattern. A system that confuses motion with progress and treats past outcomes as irrelevant data points. Our cartoon is not saying to do nothing. It is saying that charging forward without respect for history, terrain, or consequences is not strategy. It is just momentum dressed up as leadership.

And momentum, once it tips over the edge, does not ask permission on the way down; it just carries you to a loud “splat!”.