HAFEZ AL-ASSAD was not a diplomat, he was not a peacemaker, he was not a great leader. He was a murderer. In his three decades in power, the Syrian dictator terrorized his own nation, the people of Lebanon, and countless others.
President Clinton bowed his head and bit his lower lip upon receiving the news of Assad’s death; it almost seemed that a tear might creep down his cheek. And, in a sign of misplaced respect, the president sent Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to represent him at Assad’s funeral. Albright herself eulogized Assad as a “major figure” and expressed sadness at his passing.
There is no justification for honoring a man like Assad. He is a leader on a par in cruelty with Saddam Hussein. In 1982, after a minor rebellion broke out in the city of Hama, Assad sent in his troops (under the command of his brother) and brutally murdered 20,000 innocent people. The Syrian people live in fear, afraid to speak out, afraid to demand basic human rights and political freedoms. Assad, in short, was a man to be reviled.
Yes, it is true that rural Syria now has electricity, and that under the Assad regime the Syrian people have not been troubled by successive coups. But the Syrian people also live under the thumb of no less than 15 internal “security” agencies, which regulate their lives and suppress their rights to free speech and free association. Fax machines are heavily regulated; cellular communications and the Internet are reserved for a few chosen elites.
Assad left the Syrian people impoverished because he feared economic freedom would undermine his dictatorship. Small businesses can barely operate because there is no private banking. A nation known for its merchant class is mired in deep poverty. Small things that make daily life bearable — decent roads, buildings, and communications — are nonexistent.
There is also the pathetic tale of Lebanon. Invited in by Lebanon’s Christian leadership in 1976, Assad quickly turned on his hosts. Syrian troops still occupy Lebanon 24 years later. The Lebanese people are cowed by decades of Syrian sponsored communal wars; Lebanese leaders are bereft of national pride to the point that they predicate their own peace and security with Israel on an Israeli withdrawal from the once-Syrian Golan Heights!
And what of Assad’s celebrated commitment to peace — his “strategic choice” in the words of President Clinton and the secretary of state? Who is this man of peace? He is a state sponsor of terrorism, who went to his grave with the blood of Americans on his hands.
Assad was almost certainly involved in the bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983, which left 241 American servicemen dead. He supported Palestinian terrorists, Kurdish terrorists, Irish terrorists, and Japanese terrorists. Syria is to this day the main conduit through which the odious Hezbollah gets its weapons.
Notwithstanding the continued operations of Hezbollah; notwithstanding the continued sanctuary Assad provided for rejectionist Palestinian terrorist groups in Damascus; notwithstanding Syria’s continued intransigence on peace in the face of almost unimaginable concessions by the government of Israel, the Clinton administration continued to swear by Assad. The fact that Assad chose a meeting with President Clinton earlier this year to reject yet another offer of peace with Israel — a slap in the face to the U.S. government — seems not to faze administration officials one bit.
Assad is dead, and his son Bashar has been installed (for the moment) as the new Syrian dictator. The Russians, once Syria’s best ally, did not send a government representative to his funeral; nor did the Chinese, Syria’s main arms supplier. But for the funeral of this state sponsor of terrorism, this murderer, President Clinton sent his secretary of state. For shame.
Rather than bowing before Assad’s casket, the United States should be delivering a clear message of solidarity to the people of Syria: You did not deserve a dictator like Assad. You deserve peace with your neighbor, Israel. You deserve the freedom to hold elections, and to choose your own leaders. You deserve a better life. Now is the time to grab it. We stand with you in the hope that the end of Assad will mean the beginning of freedom for Syria.
Senator Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) is chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations.
