A Wall Street Journal editorial today makes the very valuable point that Syria is an enemy of the U.S. Given its role as a transit point for foreign fighters making their way into Iraq to kill American soldiers, its alliance with Hamas and Hezbollah, its alleged role in the assassination of Lebanese political officials and journalists, its support for terror in Iraq, Lebanon, Israel and the Palestinian territories, America has no reason to help preserve that regime. It doesn’t matter who follows Assad, if it’s an Islamist regime or Osama bin Laden himself, Syria can’t possibly be any more damaging to U.S. interests since the only limits the Assad regime observes are those imposed upon it by force.
The Journal suggests that the administration not only withdraw the U.S. ambassador to Damascus, Robert Ford, but also expel the Syrian envoy to Washington—the vainglorious Imad Mustafa, possibly the most toxic presence inside the Beltway. It was rumored a few years ago that the Bush administration contemplated tossing Mustafa out of the country when Damascus laid siege to U.S. allies in Lebanon and meddled in the Iraq war. Somehow Mustafa got a pass then, but it’s time for him to go now. The White House doesn’t need our diplomatic corps, never mind Syria’s, to send tough messages to a regime that only understands extremely tough messages. Sending Mustafa packing would be a good first step.
The Journal lays out further moves the administration might make, including an array of aggressive sanctions laid out by Foundation for Defense of Democracies:
Apparently, there is another round of sanctions on the way. Hisham Melhem, the Washington, D.C.-based correspondent for the Lebanese daily Al-Nahar reported on his twitter feed that “The Treasury Dept. will announce ‘targeted list’ of officials in #Syria before the ‘next big day’ (Friday) according to well-placed sources.” In another tweet, Melhem reports, “From reliable sources, the list of ‘targeted sanctions’ in #Syria includes Maher Assad, president Bashar’s brother and bloody enforcer.”
In other words, it seems that the Syrian president himself is off the hook. It’s not surprising the Obama White House is going to give a free pass to the man who’s actually calling the shots and murdering his own people. As Aaron David Miller explains in Politico, “Having worked in the State Department for more than 20 years, I know that the Assads hold a special place in the schemes and dreams of U.S. policymakers. U.S. policy always seemed to mean giving him the benefit of the doubt.”
It’s true that everyone, from Henry Kissinger to Colin Powell, flattered himself into thinking that they could do business with the Assads. But the Obama administration has taken it to a different level. An administration official told the New York Times that “Mr. Assad is sensitive to portrayals of his regime as brutal and backward. ‘He sees himself as a Westernized leader,’ one senior administration official said, ‘and we think he’ll react if he believes he is being lumped in with brutal dictators.’”
So why is the administration protecting a regime that makes war against its own people as well as America and her allies? As Michael Doran explains in his latest article in Foreign Affairs (“The Heirs of Nasser”), it is because “the Obama administration has made the Arab-Israeli peace process the organizing principle of its Middle East policy.”
In other words, the Obama White House’s Syria policy is not pragmatic and cautious. Rather, it is adventurist and ideological. The administration is sheltering Damascus in order to salvage its own bankrupt Middle East policy. If he loses Assad, Obama is lost in the region and the administration will be forced, obviously against its will, to recalibrate. The question is, how much will U.S. interests suffer in the meantime?
