No, it’s not some dark parody of current politics. It’s right there in the news. Syria’s foreign minister, Walid Moallem, has just dropped in on Baghdad to say that his government wants to help stabilize Iraq, and would like to see a timetable for American troop withdrawal. And in the U.S., the Iraq Study Group, co-chaired by James Baker and Lee Hamilton, and slated to present its list of options to President Bush in the very near future, appears to be considering these ideas.
Note, we are not talking here about pronouncements in Baghdad from the foreign minister of Australia, or Poland, or even the foreign minister of France. This is the public voice of Syria, representing the same regime, handed off in 2000 from the late Assad Sr. to the current Assad Jr., which starting in the 1970s “stabilized” Lebanon by turning it into a vassal police state. This is the same Syria that helped Hezbollah and other terrorist groups flourish in Lebanon, and is now abetting Hezbollah’s campaign to abort any remnants of last year’s democratic Cedar Revolution by consolidating control in Beirut. This is the same Syria whose ruling inner circle includes the prime suspects in the 2005 bomb murder of Lebanon’s former Prime Minister, Rafik Hariri, plus a string of other bombings targeting some of Lebanon’s most outspoken democrats, such as newspaper publisher Gebran Tueni, assassinated last December.
This is the same Syria that helped Saddam Hussein smuggle billions of dollars worth of oil out of Iraq from 2000-2003, smuggle arms shipments in, and bank illicit billions in Damascus and Beirut. This is the same Syria that by many accounts has been supporting and abetting some of the same terrorism it is now denouncing in Iraq. This is the same Syria that in the rankings of New York-based Freedom House rates among the world’s rock-bottom worst violators of the rights of its own people.
Syria’s version of “stability” is not an answer to violence in the Middle East; it is one of the main incubators. Cutting a deal with Syria may sound like a nifty bit of realpolitik, but it is the road to worse bloodshed ahead — including our own. If President Bush wants to reply to Syria’s overtures, how about trying out the quip that was making the rounds to applause in Lebanon last year: Yes, America has an exit route for the troops in Iraq — it runs right through Damascus.
Digg This
del.icio.us
PJM Home
4 Comments
Gayle Miller:The explanation: Pod people have taken over Baker & Company’s brains. Nothing else explains this complete lack of common sense!
Nov 20, 2006 - 3:14 pm Ritchie Emmons:I believe fully that the US should not ever talk to regimes such as those in Syria, Iran, DPRK. For starters, you know that they cannot be trusted to keep their word. Secondly, talks with the US, the super power that it is, brings legitimacy to these oppressive, murderous, dictatorial regimes. Why do you think that dictatorships hold elections, even though the winner has been determined well before any vote has been cast? It’s to give the rulers the veneer of legitimacy, which they so dearly desire.
One could make the argument that the US talked to the Soviet Union and if we could talk to the “Evil Empire,” we surely could talk to lesser ones such as Syria, Iran, DPRK. The USSR though was on an even keel (or so it seemed) with the US when it came to global political and economic influence, thus forcing us to deal with them as seeming equals.
This is not the case though with the 3 above named countries. We should publically declare that the US does not talk to terrorist sponsoring states who also so profoundly abuse their own people and their freedoms. It is far better in the long run to ostracize them and declare them illegitimate than it is to legitimize them by giving them a seat at the table with the USA.
Nov 20, 2006 - 3:53 pm tonymixan:James Baker and his ilk have been infected with the Vietnam ‘cut and run’ virus;and let’s hope Bush does not sell out the brave Iraqis as another president did.
Nov 20, 2006 - 6:00 pm Michael McCanles:The assumption of Syria’s proposal seems to be that the cause of a destabilized Iraq is the American invasion and occupation. This is precisely the position of the Pelosicrats who have taken power in the Congress, namely, that America’s presence in the middle-east is what causes the middle-east to hate us.
For those who already hate us, that’s a no-brainer: invade, hate America; don’t invade, hate America.
I see this Syrian proposal as a not-so-covert attempt to exloit yet once again the Democratic take-over of Congress, which is fine. What would also be fine–and I’m sure this political rhetoric is already in the works–is publicizing the fact that the Pelosicrats have always been covertly on the side of the terrorists.
We haven’t even begun to witness the civil war that’s going to break out if the Democrats start going after the WOT in the process of going after the Bush administration. Leahy is already this morning in the news talking about getting secret documents from the Bush administration about how it’s defending the country. These people don’t yet have a clue how vulnerable they are to political damnation if they systematically pursue this course.
In the meantime, I say “bravo” to anti-American middle-eastern attempts to “aid” the Democrats publicly in their worthy pursuit of what “the American people deserve to know,” as Leahy puts it.
Yeah, the American people deserve to know how the party that now controls Congress is one of America’s enemies.
Nov 24, 2006 - 10:43 am