February 8, 2005
CHALABI WON TOO:
To Be Chalabi, or Not To Be:This Syrian exile wants to overthrow another evil Baathist dictator. How can he persuade the U.S. to help him? (Elisabeth Eaves, Feb. 7, 2005, Slate)
So, you're an Arab exile. You've prospered in the United States. You've got lots of influential neocon friends. And now you want to overthrow the evil Baathist dictator back home. Here's the catch: Your name, fortunately—or perhaps unfortunately—is not Ahmad Chalabi. What are you supposed to do?This is the predicament in which a man named Farid Ghadry finds himself. (Remember that name: He could soon be cashing millions in U.S. government checks.) The regime Ghadry would like to terminate is that of Bashar Assad, dictator of Syria, his country of birth. There's no question that the Syrian government is a nasty one: Prisoners of conscience languish in jail, the police torture detainees, and the government harbors and funds some Islamic terror groups.
But Ghadry finds himself in a peculiar post-Iraq-invasion dilemma: to be Chalabi, or not to be. President Bush singled out Syria's bad behavior in the State of the Union, but no one expects regime change in Damascus anytime soon. Syria's mere nastiness isn't enough these days. Iraq has sapped the appetite for war, and nuke-happy North Korea and Iran are way ahead of Syria on the regime-change roster. "Maybe we don't have weapons of mass destruction," Ghadry told me. "But there's reason enough to help. It's important to free Syria because Syria could be on the avant-garde of helping the U.S. win the war on terror." Maybe it could, but that point alone is not about to send the American war machine rolling to Damascus.
The snide tone of this piece is especially bizarre given how embattled Baby Assad is, facing increasing pressures from America, Lebanon, Israel, Iraq, Kurdistan, France, the U.N., and the restive nation he misgoverns as a member of a minority group. There's very little likelihood he'll still be in power at the close of the Bush presidency whether we effect the regime change militarily or just politically.
MORE:
Syria's Grip on Lebanon Weakening (SAM F. GHATTAS, 2/05/05, Associated Press)
Syria's grip over Lebanon appears to be slipping under international pressure and increasingly bold Lebanese calls for Damascus to pull its army out. [...]Posted by Orrin Judd at February 8, 2005 10:22 AMThe U.N. Security Council has demanded a Syrian troop withdrawal. Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk al-Sharaa recently said Syrian troops could be out of Lebanon in two years.
Lebanese opponents of Syrian domination - emboldened by international scrutiny of Syria's actions by the United States, France and the U.N. Security Council - have made unprecedented calls for Damascus to extract its army and intelligence agents after nearly three decades of deployment in Lebanon, Syria's much smaller Arab neighbor.
"The tutelage is over and the hegemony has diminished," declared Marwan Hamadeh, a former Cabinet minister seriously wounded in an October car bomb in Beirut that killed his driver.
Some Lebanese opposition politicians this week demanded "Syrian hegemony be lifted" and pressed their case directly to a Syrian diplomat sent by President Bashar Assad to Beirut in an attempt to defuse tensions. By contrast, Lebanese politicians in the past were summoned to Damascus or were left to deal with Syria's intelligence chief in Lebanon.
Walid Jumblatt, political leader of the Druse sect and one-time Syrian ally who joined the opposition, stepped up the campaign, pointing a finger at Syria in the 1977 killing of Kamal Jumblatt, his father and prominent Lebanese leftist politician who opposed Syria.
The pro-Syrian camp has accused the opposition of taking instructions from Washington and Paris, saying the campaign against Syria also serves Israeli interests. They have said the Syrian army was still needed in the country.
The United States also has been turning up the heat on Syria.
Slate gets it wrong once again. Why can't we have a 'politics book' in Vegas where all of us who opine about the future can be compelled to ante up our own hard-earned cash before we start yapping? It would be fun to see Michael Kinsley and friends standing on street corners in shabby clothes with signs like 'Will Blog for Food.'
Nobody is planning to invade Syria, but it is merely being sheared like a sheep. The settlement between Israel and the so-called 'Palestinians' takes away a major unifying factor in Syria which has revelled in its role as the main 'confrontation' state. What is the point of being a 'confrontation' state if there's nothing left to confront about?
In Lebanon, the variety of local groups asserting independence from Syria is astounding. The notion of Maronites and Druzes or, for that matter, French and Americans at the UN on the same side in opposition to him should send shivers up Baby Assad's spine. Not since Adolf Hitler has there been a world leader so capable of pissing off mutually antagonistic groups so effectively that they are willing to put aside significant differences and work to dump him.
Inside Syria, where Baby Assad rules with an iron fist. His apparent weakness in Lebanon gets noticed. And when sharks start smelling blood, you know the rest of the story.
Baby Assad is not without resources. He is no Kim Jong Il capable of firing nukes at countries which can and will annihilate his in response, but he has options. First, he can send his allies to disrupt Israeli-Arab negotiations over Judea and Samaria. Just because Hamas got out of the suicide bomber business doesn't mean that the PFLP can't get into it. While he doesn't have the resources Saddam had, i.e. no Ghanaian sugar-daddy at the UN, he has enough cash to pay for a few hundred misguided souls to blow themselves up in Arab spots to disrupt Abbas' attempts at governance and in a few busses and restaurants in Israel to tick off Israelis.
He also can play the intercommunal card in Lebanon. Nothing stops him from uniting Greek Orthodox Christians and Sunnis against Maronites, Druzes and non-Hezbollah Shi'ites. And given the ethnic and religious divisions in his own country, he can essentially say to Americans 'Apres moi, le deluge.' This will keep him safe from outside military pressure.
Now, if some mid-level Sunni Arab intelligence officer sneaks across the border with Iraq in the dark of night with authentic photos of a Wal-Mart sized building containing WMD with Iraqi return addresses and a note from Saddam saying 'Dear Bashir: Hold onto these for me while I fight off the infidel. Love and Kisses, Saddam' all bets about intervention are off.
Posted by: Bart at February 8, 2005 11:53 AMI'm pretty sure we'll have some sort of military altercation with Syria in the next four years, probably just a small enough incursion to break Assad's back and preemptively take out some terrorists heading to Iraq.
In Iran we should be funding the democratic groups from within and turning it into the new South Africa from without. Enough apartheid references might make Europe feel good about getting (relatively) tough.
NK we can pretty much just wait out until either it collapses from within or China invades, while we just swoop in and take care of the WMD. Putting boots in that swamp would be a mistake, though, so it's either that or we just demolish Pyongyang and let SK sort it out, but no one really wants that.
Syria, though, is getting to be ripe for plucking.
Posted by: Timothy at February 8, 2005 2:35 PM