Obama must do something tangible for Syria
Danielle Pletka | CNN
Obama administration officials have labeled the United Nations’ failure to act on Syria as “outrageous” and a “travesty”. But that’s about all they’ve done about Syrian dictator Basher el Assad’s wanton murder of thousands of innocent Syrians.
Meanwhile, in the wake of the failure of last weekend’s weak Security Council resolution, more than 400 Syrians were killed in ruthless assaults. They had nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. Syrian opposition leaders have begged the international community to act, to do more than convene in contact groups and make rounds on the diplomatic circuit. But their begging has fallen on deaf ears.
Why care about Syria?
Let’s again rehearse the simple reasons:
– Syria is the soft underbelly of Iran, Tehran’s most important ally, conduit for arms and cash to terrorists.
– Syria has been home to and sponsor of terrorists that have killed American soldiers and non-combatants in Iraq, in Lebanon, in Israel, in the West Bank and more.
– Syria was likely behind the murder of the former Prime Minister of Lebanon, an act for which it has paid no price
– Syria has been the godfather to Iran’s terrorist creature, Hezbollah, which has degraded and exploited the Lebanese state (among many other sins).
-Syria’s despotic government has murdered thousands of its own people and will continue to do so until Bashar al-Assad has secured once again his dominion over the Syrian people.
A unique confluence of American moral purpose and America’s strategic interest argue for intervention in Syria. It’s time to do something tangible.
It’s time to start arming the Free Syrian Army, convening the disparate factions of the Syrian opposition and coaching them toward an interim government. It’s time to create safe zones along the border with Turkey and humanitarian corridors to get there. It’s time to protect those corridors from the air with a limited no-fly zone and establish safe cities. And it’s time to do all that without benefit of a Security Council resolution, because let’s admit it, the Security Council’s moral authority is nil with Russia and China in permanent seats.
It’s time to begin to work with Turkey and coax the Islamist Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan into a position as moral leader in his region. He may be taking Turkey down a dangerous path, but at the moment, he’s willing to do the right thing on Syria. Let’s double down on that.
It’s in the U.S. interest; it’s also in Israel’s interest, and worth their while to arrange themselves on the side of Turkey and the Arab League against the loathsome al-Assad. That doesn’t mean coming out publicly and intervening in Arab affairs, but it does mean beginning to have quiet talks behind the scenes with interested parties. Indeed, it is fascinating that Israel, which has found itself in weird concert with the Arabs on Libya, Iran and Syria, has failed to exploit that position to improve its regional relations in any way. One might almost think Israel an indifferent observer to ouster of al-Assad, a sworn enemy.
Syria will have a post-Assad future. That future could be in the hands of Qatari backed Salafis, Saudi-backed Islamists, or the Western world could have a say. Sitting on the sidelines will ensure that we have as little as possible.
Here is what President Barack Obama said about Libya in May of last year:
“To brush aside America’s responsibility as a leader and – more profoundly – our responsibilities to our fellow human beings under such circumstances would have been a betrayal of who we are. Some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries. The United States of America is different. And as president, I refused to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves before taking action.”
How does Syria not meet that standard? For shame on Obama for his hypocrisy, his indifference, and his abdication of American moral and strategic leadership.
Debka said it’s already over. Assad won. The revolution has been crushed.
The Kurds fit right in with that company. Frankly, I think Israel’s only friends in the Middle East are in Brooklyn; and they don’t have many there. They do better down south and out west. God saved Israel through Yasser Arafat in Barak’s day, and through Abu Mazen during Olmert’s time. Her latest help seems to be coming from the implaccable hatred Arabs have been showing against Arabs lately, and Turks against Persians. Even the Kurds could oblige, by killing each other off. They’re divided between two major leaders who hate each other.
It’s looking more and more like the Valley of Jehoshaphat. Israel needs to get its musicians in tune, it seems, then stand back and watch God fight for them. God help Israel!
Not Tehran. As a Sunni Muslim, he is establishing a Sunni Caliphate using opposition to Iran as a nexus around which to mobilize the anxieties and ambitions surrounding Iran’s nuclear program. He is following the advice and encouraging the ambitions of Erdogen in Ankara! Recall his starstruck visit to Turkey, where he toured the Blue Mosque in 2009.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLa8kpKScLM
By fanning the flames of Iranian antipathy toward Isreal with strategic leaks, he hopes that an exchange between Israel and Iran will clear the deck for Sunni hegemony in the region.
Actually he is leading – leading from Tehran.
OK, thanks for the info. I was thinking of it as a spoiler for the enemies, like the stalin hitler deal, but under the table. Actually, I believe this is already taking place.
American foreign policy makes no sense until you make the following crazy assumptions:
1. Obama is a Sunni Muslim
2. Al Qaeda is an asset of the CIA or globalists, much as the knights Templar would use (or pose) as bandits in order to offer protection to the victim village.
This would explain:
1 our provoking/encouraging/supporting Arab Spring, even against friendly, reliable dictators.
2 our/NATO installing Al Qaeda in Libya
3 Obama’s Nobel Prize awarded before his doing anything
The Sunni world would like to see a Sunni Caliphate preeminent in the Middle East.
By pitting Israel against Shiite Iran, they hope that Israel and Iran will fight. America will rock in and out to keep the war going until both Israel and Iran are destroyed. Once cleansed of Jews and Shiites, the Sunni caliphate under the Muslim Brotherhood will emerge predominant in the region. If Israel were to survive, once the Iranians were defeated, the Muslim Brotherhood would “March on Jerusalem”.
This is a staged globalist mugging of Israel, the complexity of which dwarfs the betrayal of Czechoslavakia 1938!
What the players are not considering is the intercession of Hashem on behalf of Israel. While the Islamic world will be defeated, the United States will be particularly decimated, due to our culturally increasing rebellion against the laws of nature and nature’s G-d, as well as our complicity in misleading Israel into the valley of the shadow of death!
I guess you make it unanimous, Pazuzu. I don’t think Yamit wants Israel to trouble Assad either, and Felix Quigly would have Israel openly support him. I think Caroline Glick is the only one who would cheer to see him go; and that not too loudly.
NATO is stirring up another hornet’s nest in Syria The Wahhabi Qataris are all for it, and the Turks can’t help but get excited at the prospect of a new Ottoman expansion to the south. The Sunnis and Shiites both hate Israel so devoutly, yet they’re going at each other like cats and dogs. This is starting to look like the valley of Jehosaphat!
FIFU. Otherwise, you couldn’t have stated it more succinctly.
The Kurds have never lifted a finger to help the Jews. Their greatest mark on the world, since capturing Jerusalem from the Crusaders, was slaughtering unresisting Christians during WWI. May God’s curse be upon the Kurds.
This is a perennial “given” — not a consideration for policy, either pro or con.
Yeah, it all comes back to me… The UN… peace… kumbaya… LSD…
I agree on every point, Ken.
Sorry, Laura. I agree with Lenny.
Don’t get us involved in another war to help Al Qaieda(like in Libya). The arab’s strategy is to BLEED US DRY, then bring down our “Miserable House” from within. This is known among arab moslems as “the death of a thousand cuts”. The more we get involved with them, the worse they’ll entangle us.
That was Lenny.
Ken has hit the nail on the head.the more the Arabs and Iranians are concerned with killing each other off, th weaker try become. Let them fight til Doomsday.
From the Israeli point of view, every year that gies by Irael grows defensively stronger. From an American point of view, the whole fiasco in the Middle East reveals the poverty if Obama’s thought and policies as far as international relationships are concerned. To tell the truth I think that For Obama everything is just wonderful. His aim was to bring America down, to turn the US into just another “shitty country” like Israel, a country that he would have disappear as survive. Obama has far “grander” aims. Obama and his handlers,I should say.
Their aim is the collapse of the capitalist West, on the ruins of which they will build their Utopian perfect world, a transnationalist paradise ruled by an elite few who will create Heaven on earth. Should thee be more than a few of us imperfect one’s around unhappy with such an arrangement, well the fascist and communist collectivists knew how to deal with that little problem.
Anyone want to invest in a barbed-wire factory? Or a quiet graveyard?
Perhaps strengthening the Kurds would keep many of Israels enemies busy: Syria, turkey, Iran, Iraq.
As a Sunni Muslim, President Obama’s interest is in continuing to expand the Sunni Caliphate as he has done throughout the Arab Spring! His aid to Israel is like giving us a water pistol after setting the region on fire. Obama has set up a situation similar to King David’s betrayal of Uriah the Hittite. His unsteady “support” is a strategy of luring Israel into either being destroyed by Iran OR attacking first. The consequences to Israel of ‘going alone’ are minimally to suffer retaliation directly as well as getting blowback from ‘allies’, whose rise in energy costs will be blamed on “the Jews” and Israel for existing as an ongoing provocation to the Muslims.
Assad is being backed up by 15000 Republican Guard forces from Iran. Assad is being opposed by British assets on the ground. It is mostly Iranian assets that are shelling Hom, whereas Syrian Army regulars, many of whom are Sunni are ambivalent. Some are even deserting. That being said, Iran is trying to maintain its Crescent (Iraq, Syria,Lebanon) reaching to Israel’s northern border.
We have a Hobson’s choice from Israel’s perspective:
1. If Assad stays, then Iran’s Crescent remains in place, sending support against Israel via Hezbollah
2. If Assad loses, then the anti-Israel Sunni Caliphate under the Muslim Brotherhood will expand to include Syria.
3. Continuing conflict and civil war – instability and refugees fleeing into Jordan and Israel. A humanitarian nightmare for the Syrian people, but perhaps the best of bad scenerios for Israel. While the civil war in Syria continues, Assad is drawing military hardware from Hezbollah in Lebanon, which removes them from Southern Lebanon … Didn’t the UN promise to disarm Hezbollah as a condition for Israeli withdrawl from Lebanon in 2006?? Now the blue helmut observers are either spotters or human shields used by Israel’s enemies!
Screw Syria, the Syrians, and all the rest, I hope and pray that the UN, the US, and the EU, and everbody else lets the Assad Syrian army beat the crap out of the Syrian opposition, slaughter as many Syrians as possible, and let this civil war go on for decades.
With luck it will spill over into Turkey, the Kurds, and maybe even Lebanon and Hizballa and with any luck and maybe a little help and the will of God, they will all kill each other off!
This unrest in the Arab world is all in Israel’s favor and the more they kill each other off, the better off we are.
Besides, who really believes that if the international powers “intervene” militarily in Syria and succeed, that those same powers won’t “intervene” in Israel for their own reasons?
I agree with Laura, that we ought to forget Syria. Pietka is dreaming, when she says,
Turkey is Israel’s enemy, one far more dangerous to her than Syria ever was. “Moral leader”??? What rubbish! Gog will be on Israel’s northern border soon enough. The last thing anyone needs to do is encourage her to go there. It is a lost cause, but I’m rooting for Assad.
Syria’s a lost cause. Either Assad will survive, or he won’t. But, the U.S. will be further restrained by the Russians and Chinese. Not to mention, there’s an election going on, and Israel may attack Iran. Forget Syria.