Daniel Pipes observes that it is just ten years ago that Hafiz al-Asad died and was succeeded by his son, the British trained opthamologist, Bashar.
And so, with Asad’s passing, my interest waned. His son and successor, Bashshar, inherited a well-functioning tyranny that he has maintained reasonably well. But Bashshar could sustain neither the horrifyingly repressive internal apparatus (e.g., some 20,000 killed in Hama in 1982) nor the wildly ambitious foreign policy that put Damascus at the center of most Middle Eastern issues (pan-Syrianism is defunct). Syria has become just another boring dictatorship.
As noted, Bashar isn’t nearly as brutal as his father, so Jonathan Spyer writes that Syria has been subject to violence from unknown sources.
The regime of Bashar Assad has shown itself to be an enthusiastic practitioner of the “strategy of tension” in Lebanon, in Iraq and elsewhere over the last halfdecade.
It appears that someone or other is currently keen on demonstrating to the Syrian leader that this can also be a game played by two sides.
So how’s Bashar celebrating? By fighting the United States in Iraq:
No matter what Syria does–sending terrorists to kill Americans in Iraq being one item high on the list, moving closer to Iran, and so on–the U.S. government will turn a blind eye.
By furthering the subversion of Lebanon by supporting Hezbollah:
It was reported that Damascus is believed to have transferred to Hezbollah Scud missiles that would be able to reach any part of Israel. “The threat that Syria might transfer more advanced weapons to Hezbollah has existed for a long time,” says Elliott Abrams, who oversaw Middle East affairs in the George W. Bush White House and is now a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “With respect to Scuds, it has been understood the Israelis would interdict such a shipment. I do not recall the Bush Administration ever expressing disagreement with that view.”
So how does the Obama administration treat Syria in response? With a cake eating contest! (via memeorandum)
The State Department’s two leading Twitterati, Special Advisor on Innovation Alec J. Ross (@alecjross) and Policy Planning staffer Jared Cohen (@jaredcohen), are in Syria this week leading a delegation of tech companies hoping to, as the Wall Street Journal’s Jay Solomon puts it, “woo President Bashar al-Assad away from his strategic alliance with Iran” with offers of networking equipment, computer software, and the like.
But it’s not all work and no play for Ross and Cohen, who have been finding some time to take in the sights and tell us about it, 140 characters at a time. For example, according to Ross, on Tuesday Cohen challenged the Syrian Minister of Telecom to a cake-eating contest and called it “Creative Diplomacy.” Match that, Tehran!
… no other American President would countenance giving a repressive regime the means for subjugating its citizenry for the sake of ‘engagement.’ I suppose we ought to be thankful that he didn’t send Boeing and Lockheed and Textron while he was at it.
Let Israeli eat Scuds, let Bashar eat cake.
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
