After Obama changes tack on Syria, what would the presidential candidates do?

Experts warned of mission creep after the president ordered US special forces to take a more active role but most White House hopefuls back greater intervention. Barack Obama’s announcement on Friday that American special forces will take a more active role in the war in Syria is for many critics of his foreign policy a confirmation that the US has inched deeper into a chaotic conflict.

It’s also an opportunity for presidential candidates to both praise and denounce him. And most Republican and Democratic presidential candidates propose doing even more than the raids that Obama has authorized, which skeptics call “mission creep”. The war pits the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, against various rebels and the jihadi group Islamic State, and now involves the US, Russia, Iran, Gulf states, Turkey, the Kurds and Iraq. Here’s how foreign policy might look under the ideas of potential presidents.