Tag Archives: Bashar al-Assad

There Are No Good Guys In The Syrian Civil War

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Reuters reported today that Israel notified the United States after it carried out two air strikes in Syria–not before.

The article reports:

Israeli jets bombed Syria on Sunday for the second time in 48 hours. Israel does not confirm such missions explicitly – a policy it says is intended to avoid provoking reprisals. But an Israeli official acknowledged that the strikes were carried out by its forces.

“It would not be unusual for them to take aggressive steps when there was some chance that some sophisticated weapons system would fall into the hands of people like Hezbollah,” the U.S. intelligence official told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Israel is much closer to the war in Syria than America and has a much more vital interest. Bashar al-Assad is aligned with Hezbollah, a terrorist organization sponsored by Iran which frequently fires rockets at Israel from various locations. It is suspected that the rockets Israel stopped might eventually wind up in Lebanon aimed at Israel.

The article further reports:

Rather than an attempt to tip the scales against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Israel’s action is seen more as part of its own conflict with Iran, which it fears is sending missiles to Hezbollah in Lebanon through Syria. Those missiles might hit Tel Aviv if Israel makes good on threats to attack Tehran’s nuclear program.

Another Western intelligence source told Reuters the latest attack, like the previous one, was directed against stores of Fateh-110 missiles in transit from Iran to Hezbollah.

Israel has made it clear that it will take action to prevent Iran from going nuclear. It is in the interest of Israel to make sure that if it attacks Iran the allies of Iran that surround Israel have a few rockets as possible.

The war in Syria is a civil war, but it is also a war between terrorists. Hezbollah supports Bashar al-Assad, a Shiite, and many of the rebels have ties to Al Qaeda, which tends Sunni (the majority population of Saudi Arabia). The problem with the war is that if America gets involved, both sides will unite and turn against the ‘infidels.’ At the present time the Obama Administration is said to be negotiating with some of the ‘moderate’ rebels, but there are some serious questions as to how much power the moderates have with the rebels. If America chooses to arm the rebels, we could be shipping arms to Syria that will be used against American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan in the very near future. Our best bet is to do anything we can to get innocent civilians out of Syria and let the terrorists fight it out among themselves. Israel has more of a reason to get involved because Hezbollah is already sending rockets against her, and because Israel will be directly involved regardless of who wins. It is in Israel’s best interests to limit the number of rockets going from Iran to Syria so as to limit the number of rockets that will be coming in their direction when both sides stop fighting each other.

This attack on the rockets heading for Syria could be seen as a backdoor attack on Iran or as a warning to Iran. I suspect there will be retaliation against Israel and further action by Israel. By making it public that America was not notified until after the attack, it is quite possible that Hezbollah terrorist cells in America will not be activated in response.

 

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Sometimes It’s Better Not To Enter The Fight

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I say this reluctantly because I know that every day innocent people are dying in Syria, and I would love the see America step in and stop the killing. However, the fact remains that we are not able to step in and stop the killing and that it would not be wise for us to attempt to do so.

Andrew McCarthy posted an article at National Review on Saturday about the war in Syria. He points out that the people who are asking us to intervene in Syria are saying that if we don’t there will be a vacuum of leadership there. No, there won’t. Al Qaeda has already filled that vacuum. We need to remember that Bashar al-Assad. is an Alawite, a minority Shiite group in Syria. The rebels in Syria are Sunnis, led by the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda.. Why in the world would we want to get in the middle of that fight? Neither side represents either democracy or stability in the Middle East.

Andrew McCarthy sums up the problem of intervention in Syria:

…the narrative continues, untold legions of Muslim moderates, secular democrats, and religious minorities who would otherwise be charting Syria’s democratic destiny are being elbowed aside. Even worse, by failing to intervene forcefully — meaning, to fuel the jihad with high-tech combat weapons and an aerial campaign to soften up Assad’s remaining defenses — the administration is frittering away the opportunity to strike up pragmatic alliances with the Vaccum-filling Islamists. Sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought — eager to help the Brotherhood, but too concerned about arms falling into terrorist hands — Obama is forfeiting our chance to influence the outcome.

Right. I mean, look at how ably our decade of heavy investment has steered Iraq and Afghanistan in a pro-American direction. And behold how they love us in Benghazi!

The article concludes:

It is no longer 1996 — the year Iran bombed the Khobar Towers and killed 19 American airmen. The Syria hawks are quite right to argue that Iran remains a major threat to American interests. They are wrong, however, to treat Iran as the only such threat. The Sunni supremacist crescent that the Muslim Brotherhood, al-Qaeda, and their allies would run from Anatolia through the Persian Gulf and across North Africa would be no less hostile to the West than the Shiite competitor Iran is trying to forge. If Assad falls and the Brothers take over, that defeat for Tehran will not be a boon for the United States.

It is not isolationism to insist that American interventions be limited to situations in which a vital American interest must be vindicated. There is no such interest in Syria.

The only American intervention in Syria that would be acceptable to me would be to get the civilians out and let the extremists slug it out among themselves. The best thing we can do is provide aid to the refugee camps that have been set up in neighboring countries.

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A Major Question About The Hagel Nomination

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There has been some reluctance on the part of Senator Hagel to reveal his financial supporters. There have been two recent articles at Breitbart.com regarding those supporters–one on Thursday by Ben Shapiro and one on Thursday by Joel B. Pollak.

The article by Mr. Pollak states that some of the financial supporters of Senator Hagel are very friendly to Hamas. One of Senator Hagel’s supporters is former Lebanese prime minister Saad Hariri.

Mr. Pollak reports:

Hariri, whose father Rafik Hariri was assassinated (likely by the Hezbollah terror group) in 2005, inherited his family fortune and emerged as a Sunni Muslim leader in Lebanon’s fractured ethnic-religious mosaic. He served as prime minister from late 2009 until early 2011, when Hezbollah’s political wing withdrew from his government amid controversy over its involvement in his father’s death. He now lives outside Lebanon in self-imposed exile.

The Hariri family has supported the Atlantic Council, a think tank Hagel chairs, and provided the funding for the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East, which was launched in 2011 with Vice President Joe Biden in attendance. The Hariri Center’s stated purpose is to “promote innovative policies to advance economic and political liberalization, sustainable conflict resolution, and greater regional and international integration.”

Hariri is thought to be connected to Syrian opposition groups, even though as prime minister he attempted to improve relations with Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. He is well-regarded by Western supporters–a fact that his local opponents sometimes use against him. Accusations–likely false, and probably planted by opponents–have even circulated that he is working with the Israel Defense Force to train anti-Hezbollah soldiers in Jordan.

Yet even the liberal-minded Hariri has expressed open hostility towards Israel, and has been at pains to show his support for Hamas, the predominantly Sunni Palestinian terror group that controls the Gaza Strip.

Ben Shapiro reports:

On Thursday, Senate sources told Breitbart News exclusively that they have been informed that one of the reasons that President Barack Obama’s nominee for Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel, has not turned over requested documents on his sources of foreign funding is that one of the names listed is a group purportedly called “Friends of Hamas.”

Yesterday, 25 senators sent a letter to Hagel demanding information on his foreign funding. Hagel has refused all such requests, prompting the senators to state, “in the judgment of the undersigned, a Committee vote on your nomination should not occur unless and until you provide the requested information.”

Generally I believe that a President should be allowed to choose his own cabinet, but until the questions regarding Senator Hagel’s overseas friends are answered, I think this nomination should be put on hold.

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Sometimes There Are No Good Guys In The Fight

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On Sunday The New York Times posted an article about the people attempting to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad of Syria and the arms being supplied to them.

The article reports:

The United States is not sending arms directly to the Syrian opposition. Instead, it is providing intelligence and other support for shipments of secondhand light weapons like rifles and grenades into Syria, mainly orchestrated from Saudi Arabia and Qatar. The reports indicate that the shipments organized from Qatar, in particular, are largely going to hard-line Islamists.

The concern is that the rebels in Syria are another part of the “Arab Spring.” So far the Arab Spring has not brought freedom, but sharia law.

The article further states:

American officials have been trying to understand why hard-line Islamists have received the lion’s share of the arms shipped to the Syrian opposition through the shadowy pipeline with roots in Qatar, and, to a lesser degree, Saudi Arabia. The officials, voicing frustration, say there is no central clearinghouse for the shipments, and no effective way of vetting the groups that ultimately receive them.

Evidently some of the rebels are planning ahead. The article reports:

Late last month in the Turkish border town of Antakya, at least two men who had recently been in Syria said they had seen Islamist rebels buying weapons in large quantities and then burying them in caches, to be used after the collapse of the Assad government. But it was impossible to verify these accounts, and other rebels derided the reports as wildly implausible.

It seems to me that when we are not sure who the good guys are in the fight, we need to stay out of it. My heart goes out to the innocent civilians in Syria, but it seems to me that supplying arms to anyone will simply result in more people being killed. Assad is a horrible dictator, but there are no guarantees that a government that replaces him will be any better.

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Quote Of The Week

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From a Brent Bozell column at NewsBusters on September 22:

“One satirist put this hyperbole in perspective. Fouad Ajami recounted a mock Twitter statement by Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, presently butchering his Muslim subjects.“Wow, it’s good that I’ve been killing women and children. It’s good I’ve been shelling mosques,” said the fake tweet. “Imagine what would have happened had I made an anti-Muslim video. They would have really come after me.””

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The Secretary Of State In A Second Term Of Obama

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The Weekly Standard posted a story on Monday about the choice of Secretary of State if President Obama wins a second term. Evidently, the conventional wisdom is that Hillary Clinton will step down in order to run for President in 2016. Senator John Kerry is the expected replacement.

An editorial in the Globe and Mail by Yossi Klein Halevi related the following story:

Last year, I was part of a group of Israelis who met in Jerusalem with Massachusetts Senator John Kerry. Mr. Kerry had just come from Damascus with excellent news: Bashar al-Assad was ready for peace with Israel. When one of the participants mentioned that demonstrations had begun to challenge Mr. Assad’s legitimacy, Mr. Kerry’s response was: All the more reason to negotiate while he’s still in power. In other words: Israel had the golden opportunity to give up the strategic Golan Heights to a dictator who might be deposed by a popular revolution, which might or might not recognize whatever peace agreement he signed.

That kind of wishful thinking has resulted in Western policy toward the Middle East that is strategically incoherent.

A second term of President Obama would be a nightmare both domestically and internationally. Keep this in mind when you vote.

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What Should We Do In Syria ?

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Victor Davis Hanson posted an article at National Review today about the situation in Syria. It is entitled, “The Bad-Good Idea of Removing Assad.” That pretty much says it all.

The Bashar Assad dictatorship murders its own people, aids and arms Hezbollah, and targets Israel. This is not a dictator that America can do business with. However, what happens if he is ousted?

The article states:

But intervention, even if by air or through stealthy military assistance, requires some sort of strategy, and right now the United States does not seem to have any coherent one. We expected that post-Qaddafi Libya, and an Egypt without Hosni Mubarak, would be far better. They might be some day. But right now, emerging Islamic republics are hardly democratic. Some seem every bit as anti-American as were the dictatorships they replaced — and they could be even more intolerant of women, tribal minorities, and Christians. 

The point is not that we should support only idealists who promise an Arab version of Santa Monica, but that we do not oust one monster whom we are not responsible for only to empower one just as bad whom we would be responsible for. 

Our success in overthrowing tyrants in the Middle East is not matched by any success in what the dictatorships were replaced with. Sharia Law is enshrined in the constitutions of both Iraq and Afghanistan and will be in the Egyptian constitution. All we have done is replace one bad ruler with another bad ruler. That is not what America has done in the past, nor should it be what America does in the present.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. Mr. Hanson brings remarkable insight into the question of what we should be doing about the slaughter that is currently going on in Syria.

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Let’s Unfund The United Nations

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CNSNews reported today that UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) has decided to reappoint Syria to a committee dealing with human rights. The United States declared a funding freeze on UNESCO after they recently admitted  “Palestine” to the agency.

The article reports:

Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime was recently reappointed to the Committee on Conventions and Recommendations, a subsidiary body of the U.N. Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization’s executive board.

The 29-member committee, which meets twice a year, is tasked to examine often sensitive communications received from individuals or organizations relating to human rights violations within UNESCO’s field of competence – that is, in education, science, culture and communication (including freedom of opinion and expression.)

Other members of the committee in 2010-2011 include Algeria, Belarus, China, Cuba, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and Venezuela. Not exactly a group known for its support of civil liberties.

The article also reported:

The U.S. accounts for 22 percent of UNESCO’s operating budget and also makes voluntary contributions. The enforced funding cut saves U.S. taxpayers more than $80 million a year.

The United Nations does not even agree with itself on the issue of Syria. The article reports:

But Syria’s return to the committee is particularly controversial at a time when Damascus is under fire for a violent response to anti-government protests that has killed more than 3,500 people. (A U.N. General Assembly committee on Tuesday passed a draft resolution by a 122-13 vote condemning Assad for the crackdown.)

It really is time for the United States to withdraw itself and its support from the United Nations. The organization began with good intentions, but now has become a place where tyrants rule.

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