Syria's Assad Regime Goes Humanistic -- Everybody Is a Humanitarian Nowadays

 The quote below has to be the quote of the month -- or near the top in the most astounding quote contest. It appeared in The Economist for 16 October 2021 in a report on the current Expo in Dubai:

    "We believe that every human being is part of the collective conscience."

Doesn't that sound great? How humane and how humanist? The Economist goes on about this statement: 

    ". . . a message on the walls of the Syrian pavilion . . . Why the Syrian government has spent         years dropping bombs on many of those humans is not explained."

Who knew that The Economist or its journos had a sense of humor?

Anyhow, not even The Economist asks why the Syrian regime has been accusing Jews throughout history of bizarre and horrid crimes.

Why Are Ukrainian Officials & Bashar Assad Allowed to Call Enemies "Terrorists" but the Western Press Won't Use the Word?

Forty years ago in the 1970s, the Irish Republican Army Provisional faction was performing acts of terrorism and sometimes mass murder in Northern Ireland. And the BBC called them "terrorists." In the same years, the Fatah --meaning conquest of a city in Arabic-- was acting as a mass murderous terrorist group. Neither Fatah nor its partners in mass murder terrorism against Israelis and Jews, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine,  the Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine plus half a dozen smaller murder factions, was called "terrorist" by the BBC. Who can reckon why this discrepancy? Why were IRA Provos called "terrorists" but not Fatah or the PFLP or the PDFLP?

Maybe the BBC thought that British blood was redder than Jewish-Israeli blood. I can only speculate.

In recent years it is not only the BBC that refuses to call terrorists what they are. Now it is a well-established widespread practice in Western press and media outlets that terrorists are called "militants." In earlier years, a militant was a guy who came out to walk the picket line during a strike, a guy who came to the picket line every day, even in bad weather when most people would be more comfortable at home. A militant for a revolutionary faction was somebody who would pick up a thousand leaflets printed by his faction and stand on a street corner all day giving them out. But nobody in those far off days  would call somebody who planted a bomb in a school playground a "militant."

But the word "terrorist" is still  used these days. Bashar Assad called his domestic enemies "terrorists" in 2011 even before allies and cothinkers of al-Qa`ida had joined the struggle against Assad, or what is now a struggle  to determine the future of Syria.
When Assad started calling the rebels against him "terrorists" before it was  true, back in 2011, he was wrong. But he knew very well what and who were terrorists. He himself and his father before him had funded and trained Arab terrorists attacking Israel. The Assad regime in Syria had funded and trained several of the smaller PLO factions since the 1960s, and Hamas & Hizbullah, since the 1980s. After the  US invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Assad regime armed and trained terrorists who operated in Iraq against the foreign occupation troops, including Americans of course. These Syrian-trained terrorists especially took to using bombs to slaughter the Shiite population in Iraq. Surely the Assad regime knew that these were terrorists. By the way, today Assad is allied with Shiites warriors against Sunni Muslim rebels against him.

Now we know that Assad's regime is greatly aided by the Russian government. The Russian govt also supports rebels and insurgents in Eastern Ukraine and Crimea. These rebels and insurgents who favor Russian rule over their home areas in Eastern Ukraine, in the Don Basin, and so on, are rough and abusive and often thuggish. But they are hardly terrorists in the sense of Hamas or Hizbullah or al-Qa`ida. Yet officials of the Ukrainian government, Yatsenyuk and Poroshenko and so on, call these rebels/insurgents "terrorists." This is one of the things that keeps the new Ukrainian govt from having any credibility,

Now the new Ukrainian govt is supported by Western powers including the EU & USA. So Russia's ally in Syria, Assad, called his opponents "terrorists"  even when the rebels fighting him were not terrorists.
Today, Ukrainian officials supported by the EU & USA call the rebels that Russia supports "terrorists" when they are not.

Meanwhile, Western news outlets like BBC, France24, the New York Times and so many others, call the real terrorists mere "militants."

Hence the word terrorist has become an ill-treated orphan. Can't somebody sort out the meanings and  usages of the words "terrorist" & "militant"? Where is Orwell when we need him?

Charles Malik: The West Is the Problem

Anti-Zionism is the anti-imperialism of fools.

Charles Malik was a former president of the UN General Assembly, a former foreign minister of Lebanon, and a professor of philosophy. He was not only a knowledgeable insider in world politics but had the intellect to understand what was happening in a historical perspective. Malik was deeply disappointed by the West's failure to defend Lebanon as --in part and imperfectly-- an outpost of Western civilization in the Middle East. In 1984 he wrote an op ed in the Wall Street Journal where he stated:

For months now the world has been focusing on Lebanon as a problem. The problem is not Lebanon or the importance of Lebanon. The problem is the West. Indeed, the importance of Lebanon is precisely that it raises the problem of the West. Lebanon would never have been a problem if the West itself were not the problem. And the West is not only the problem but also the solution. That is its singular greatness. And the solution is to be true to the deepest value of the West: the primacyof the spirit and the freedom of the soul. [WSJ 3-28-1984]

To confirm what Malik wrote, Lee Smith points out how US policy [he refers mainly to the Obama administration] has befriended the Syrian Assad regime despite its many many offenses against the United States and against Americans:

To survive, Damascus needs the world to ignore what it is up to. It particularly needs indifference in Washington, where the Obama administration has seemed sadly oblivious to the fact that what a regime does at home is indicative of how it will act abroad—or, in the case of Syria, a state sponsor of terror and ally of Iran, how it has acted over the last 40 years, targeting especially American citizens, interests, and allies.
For all that, the administration just wants the Syria issue, the uprising, the opposition, to go away. It would prefer not to deal with it and thus has come up with all sorts of excuses to do just that.
It was five months, and many thousand dead, into the uprising before Obama called on Assad to step down. Instead of leading, the president tasked Syria policy out to Turkey, then to the Arab League, which sent a monitoring delegation led by a former Sudanese intelligence chief suspected of war crimes in Darfur.

Smith goes farther. He argues that its position on Syria, since it asked Assad to leave office, does not indicate real opposition to Assad but rather reluctance to see the Assad clan's fall. Smith raises the question of where the Obama administration and the State Dept really stand:

Unfortunately, the White House has painted itself into a corner. Because the administration has never really wanted to see Assad fall, it has talked only of stopping the violence . . . , with the unstated provision that once the murders stop, the murderer still rules. . . .

The question of where Obama & Co. really stand arises concerning the Iranian nuke bomb project as well. Bear in mind that Iran's ayatollahs are major supporters of the Assad regime and vice versa:

What’s odd is that the White House has let on, through various media surrogates, that it may come to accept the inevitability of the Iranian nuclear program and move toward a policy of containment and deterrence. . . . In its dithering on Syria, the administration shows a lack of seriousness in dealing with Iran. . . .

Yet the Assad regime, going back to 1983 at least, has a record of killing offcial Americans as well as American troops in both Lebanon and Iraq:

Under Assad the Damascus airport was a jihadist transport hub from which foreign fighters were either bused directly to the Iraqi border to fight U.S. troops, or warehoused in Syrian prisons until they could be put to some use. Washington knew very well that Syrian intelligence was working with al Qaeda because it had evidence of it in the Sinjar documents, showing that 90 percent of the foreign fighters in Iraq were coming through Syria. When a series of suicide bombings killed hundreds of Iraqis in the fall of 2009, the Obama administration hushed Iraqi officials who pointed a finger at Damascus. In other words, al Qaeda’s position in Syria was a problem U.S. officials were content to ignore when, with the help of Assad’s intelligence agents, the organization was killing American troops and Iraqis. But now the fact that al Qaeda elements, which may still be under the control of Syrian intelligence, are targeting regime installations, is a reason not to support the opposition [here Smith is pointing at Obama administration hypocrisy]. . . . The regime in Damascus that has so much Syrian blood on its hands also, along with its allies in Iran and Hezbollah, has killed many thousands of Americans. In Lebanon, U.S. Marines, diplomats, and intelligence officials were slaughtered by Iranian and Syrian assets; in Iraq, the Syrians and Iranians backed both Sunni and Shia fighters in their war against American troops, leaving almost 5,000 dead and many more thousands wounded [The Weekly Standard, 5 March 2012]

So the Assad regime in Syria has been an enemy of the United States and of Americans, including rank and file soldiers plus diplomats and intelligence officials. Yet the Syrian Assad regime was being coddled by the State Dept in the mid-1970s, under Kissinger and since then. The Baker-Hamilton Report drawn up for the Bush 2 administration in about 2006 recommended helping solve all Middle Eastern problems by pressuring Israel to give up the Golan Heights to Assad-ruled Syria. Apparently, Israel's welfare was secondary to Assad regime welfare. Or just how does one explain the situation that Lee Smith describes together with my extending the picture of Washington indulgence of the Assads back to the mid-1970s?

Brits Echo US State Dept Soft Hand with Syria -- More UK Hypocrisy

UPDATING 7-13&20&21&23&24&25&27&8-4&6&9-2011 at bottom

BRITAIN ECHOES OBAMA POLICY ON SYRIA: The British are still waiting for Assad to carry out reforms!! Can you believe the naked hypocrisy?

Syria: London condemns the repression in Hama: "The violent repression in Hama will only undermine the regime's legitimacy a little more and raise serious question about its will to put into practice the reforms that it recently announced," William Hague, British minister of foreign affairs stressed in a communiqué. "No true political dialogue can take place at the moment when a brutal military oppression is being conducted," he added. At least eleven civilians were killed by Syrian forces on Tuesday in Hama, a city in the center of the country. [Guysen News 7-5-2011]

Syrie: Londres condamne la répression à Hama "La violente répression à Hama ne fera que saper un peu plus la légitimité du régime et soulèvent de sérieuses questions sur sa volonté de mettre en oeuvre les réformes qu'il a annoncées récemment", a souligné le ministre britannique des Affaires étrangères William Hague dans un communiqué. "Aucun véritable dialogue politique ne peut avoir lieu au moment où est menée une répression militaire brutale", a-t-il ajouté. Au moins onze civils ont été tués par les forces syriennes mardi à Hama, une ville du centre du pays.

London thinks [ostensibly] that Assad's regime still has some "legitimacy" left because it says, "The violent repression in Hama will only undermine the regime's legitimacy a little more ." When did the Assad regime in Syria --going back to the 1960s-- ever have legitimacy? The Hama massacre of 1982 did not undo the regime's legitimacy at all as far as Her Majesty's Govt was & is concerned.
7-5-2011 Washington is still wringing its hands over Syrian repression. "The United States is very troubled by the continuing attacks on peaceful demonstrators in Syria"-- State Dept. Harsh criticism? Maybe not in the circumstances. Anyhow the State Dept is not troubled enough to demand that Assad get out. Recall that Obama told Mubarak to get out for much less.

Syrie: les USA réclament le départ des troupes syriennes d’Hama (Guysen.International.News)Les Etats-Unis ont réclamé aujourd'hui le départ des forces syriennes de la ville d'Hama, exigeant aussi du régime qu'il cesse sa "campagne d'arrestations". "Les Etats-Unis sont très inquiets de la poursuite des attaques contre des manifestants pacifiques en Syrie", a souligné Victoria Nuland, la porte-parole du département d'Etat.

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Carlo Panella sees Bashar Assad's speech of 20 June 2011 as resembling a Goebbels speech [qui]. He thinks that Assad fears fitna, chaos within the Muslim community [Il Foglio, 21 Giugno 2011]. Among other things, Assad reported in the speech that 64,000 Syrians had been arrested or were being sought for arrest and punishment by Syrian security forces. Panella published his article on June 21, but UK chief diplomat, William Hague, was still calling Assad a potential reformer on July 5, 2011.
7-20-2011 Hilary/Obama backtracks on harsh words for Assad. Brutality is OK and the Syrian Opposition should cooperate with Assad Basher to bring reforms -- That's Washington's message about Syria as of now and the EU falls in line [here].
Tony Badran diagnoses earlier stages of the pathology of Obama Syria policy [here]
7-21-2011 Barry Rubin picks apart a lunatic editorial in the New York Times [State Dept mouthpiece] which tells the Lebanese prime minister to be a good boy and follow through on the international tribunal's indictments of the Hizbullah operatives who organized and carried out the murder of Rafiq Hairi & a score of others, and arrest them [here]. Unless the current Lebanese PM wants to end up like Hariri, he is quite unlikely to taken any meaningful action against Hizbullah operatives as long as the Hizb controls Lebanon. But the NYT can pretend that we are living in a civilized world.
Tony Badran now diagnoses the latest stages of Obama's pathological Syria policy [here]. Should we blame Obama's mentors, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Lee Hamilton, or an ingrained and insane Third Worldism transmitted to him as a contagion from the Communist who served him as a father figure in his youth?
7-23-2011 Barry Rubin again ponders why Obama & Co. are still trying to prop up the Syrian Assad regime, although it is hated by most Syrians and is likely to be overthrown [according to Israeli intelligence] [here]. Instead of trying to work with the Syrian opposition --a heterogeneous group to be sure-- in order to keep the Muslim Brotherhood out of a future Syrian power structure as much as possible, the Obama administration throws out several fraudulent arguments. One is the lie that Israel wants Assad and his regime to stay in power. Another is the danger that the Muslim Brotherhood might take power in a post-Assad Syria. But we can't trust that as being a real concern in Washington, since Obama and others speaking for him urged the powers that be in Egypt to allow "non-secular" forces to share power in a new, post-Mubarak Egypt, and one of Obama's "national security" clowns, Clapper, even minimized the Islamist nature of the MB by falsely claiming that it was "largely secular."
7-24-2011 Lee Smith calls the Obama White House's Syria policy "morally obtuse" [here]. Smith believes that the regime is doomed.
7-25-2011 Elliott Abrams judges the sincerity of Assad's offer to allow political parties to organize in Syria, provided that they respect "freedom and basic rights." [here]
Tony Badran offers ways that Obama & his administration could use to pressure Assad into leaving. But Badran makes the diagnosis that Obama is still reluctant to tell Assad to leave [here]
7-25-2011 Hossein Askari [here] writes: "While the Arab Spring has threatened the Assad regime, at first the White House lent support to Syria’s dictator, privately arguing that Assad’s fall would increase both instability in the region . . . . Such hypocrisy—backing oppressive regimes in Riyadh, Manama and Damascus while professing unquestioned support for human rights and democratic values—undermines U.S. credibility and influence in the Middle East . . . ."
8-3-2011 Fiamma Nirenstein on the Security Council's failure to speak out about the regime massacres in Syria [here]
8-4-2011 Catherine Ashton has given your ever loyal and ever modest blogger a helping hand. She told the world after Bashar Assad had taken "a step in the right direction" by issuing a new law permitting a multi-party political situation in Syria [here]. She did this after French foreign minister, Alain Juppe, had sneered at Assad's move as a joke and a "provocation." The rather dull-witted Mrs Ashton or Baroness Ashton is holding on to the old British position of forgiving indulgence for Assad after even Obama had taken a more hostile stance toward Assad. She helped me, as said above, because other leaders, like Obama and Juppe, had already distanced themselves more from Assad, thereby leaving me without as much to criticize in them as before. She is the EU foreign affairs commissioner and seems to becoming an embarassment for the EU. They should throw her out now in order to maintain any semblance of decency.
8-6-2011 Jonathan Tobin reports that UNESCO, headed by former Clinton honcho, Anthony Lake, continues to give money to Syrian govt programs --money raised from American children among others, while the regime keeps on slaughtering its people and while world powers finally rebuke Assad & his regime that [here]
8-9-2011 Eyal Zisser gives the 20th century historical background of Syria and the present regime [here]

How Obama's State Dept Works to Keep Assad Basher in Power

UPDATINGS up to 7-17&20&21&24&8-6&7-2011

Anti-Zionism is the anti-imperialism of fools.

Despite the usual viscous peace-loving goo that is often emitted by the State Dept, it is obvious now and has been --for years in fact-- that successive US administrations have worked to keep the Assad regime in power in Syria. They have worked to protect it from enemies both at home and abroad [such as Israel, such as the Lebanese anti-Syrian March 14 Movement, etc]. This was done despite the aid that the Assad regime gave to al-Qa`ida and pro-al-Qa`ida terrorists to get into Iraq and kill American troops there as well as Iraqi civilians.

Elliott Abrams talks about Obama's latest Syria policy on the Council for Foreign Relations blog, of all places. The policy now is that the Syrian opposition --whose rank & file Assad Basher's regime has been torturing and slaughtering for months now-- should talk with the regime in order to bring about "reforms" and "transition" in Syria. It is a weird, if not bizarre, policy. Here is Abrams:

In the last week the news has brought reports of additional repression in Syria, and of the American response: to urge Syrian dissidents to negotiate with the Assad regime.

This Washington Post account describes typical events on the ground in Syria:

“Around 100 peaceful protesters calling for freedom were met with police and baton-wielding security forces Thursday at Damascus University. Students gathered outside the faculty of economics in the Baramkeh area of Damascus minutes after 3pm today calling for freedom. Dozens more students joined together with the small group as the chanting became more forceful. One female protester managed to unfurl a flag before police and security forces charged on the crowd.”

On June 23, The New York Times reported that “Syrian forces backed by snipers and tanks stormed into the border town of Khirbet al-Jouz…sending hundreds of refugees fleeing to Turkey from the informal camp where they had sought shelter from a violent crackdown on protests in the country’s rural northwest.”

The Assad regime has adopted a diplomatic and propaganda plan so clear in its duplicity that I had assumed no one would fall for it. While the killing and jailing continue, the regime has also allowed one single meeting of dissidents in Damascus. In response, according to the Guardian newspaper in London, “The US is pushing the Syrian opposition to maintain dialogue with Bashar al-Assad’s regime as details emerge of a controversial ‘roadmap’ for reforms that would leave him in power for now despite demands for his overthrow during the country’s bloody three-month uprising.”

The Guardian account continues: “Quiet US interest in the roadmap dovetails with public demands from Washington that Assad reform or step down. Robert Ford, the US ambassador, has been urging opposition figures to talk to the regime, said Radwan Ziadeh, a leading exile, who insisted the strategy would not work. ‘They are asking Bashar to lead the transition and this is not acceptable to the protesters,’ he said. ‘It is too late.’”

The State Department denies that it is pushing the opposition into compromising its objectives and principles, but the Guardian then reports this: “A state department spokesman said: ‘We are encouraging genuine dialogue between the opposition and the regime but we are not promoting anything. We want to see a democratic Syria but this is in the hands of the Syrian people.’”

So, it is in the hands of the Syrians—but just in case they don’t get the message it is again clarified: the United States wants the regime to talk, not to fall. In recent trips to the Middle East and in conversations with Arab democracy activists, I have often been asked why the United States is backing Bashar. After months of denying it, I can only conclude they were right. How else can one read these news reports?

It is not possible to have “genuine dialogue” with a regime that has murdered roughly 1,400 peaceful protesters, jailed up to 10,000 more, and continues to shoot and imprison anyone it pleases. The American call for such “dialogue” is an act of realpolitik that abandons all claim to morality.

That is bad enough, but realpolitik must then be judged by its logic and its fruits. There are none, except for undermining the moral position of the United States. To repeat what has been written here before, the Assad regime is an enemy of the United States. It has the blood of tens of thousands of Syrians on its hands but also of thousands of Americans, killed in Iraq by jihadis it led into Iraq for that purpose. It is Iran’s only Arab ally, and provides Iran with a Mediterranean port, a border with Israel through Hizballah, and an arms trafficking route from Iran to Hizballah. It supports and houses Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist groups. The fall of the Assad regime would be the greatest blow we can strike against Iran and its terrorist allies today.

“Encouraging genuine dialogue” is a pitiful position for the United States to take when our interests—and those of our enemies—are so clear, and when astonishingly courageous Syrians keep risking their lives to bring down the Assad regime. Our interests and our values coincide in Syria, and both are undermined when our policies have the effect of prolonging in power a vicious, anti-American regime allied to terrorist groups and to Iran. This policy is folly, not realpolitik. - - - - - end of Abrams - - - -

7-5-2011 BRITAIN ECHOES OBAMA POLICY ON SYRIA: The British are still waiting for Assad to carry out reforms!! Can you believe the naked hypocrisy?

Syrie: Londres condamne la répression à Hama "La violente répression à Hama ne fera que saper un peu plus la légitimité du régime et soulèvent de sérieuses questions sur sa volonté de mettre en oeuvre les réformes qu'il a annoncées récemment", a souligné le ministre britannique des Affaires étrangères William Hague dans un communiqué. "Aucun véritable dialogue politique ne peut avoir lieu au moment où est menée une répression militaire brutale", a-t-il ajouté. Au moins onze civils ont été tués par les forces syriennes mardi à Hama, une ville du centre du pays.

London thinks [ostensibly] that Assad's regime still has some "legitimacy" left because it says, "The violent repression in Hama will only undermine the regime's legitimacy a little more ." When did the Assad regime in Syria --going back to the 1960s-- ever have legitimacy? The Hama massacre of 1982 did not undo the regime's legitimacy at all as far as Her Majesty's Govt was & is concerned.
7-5-2011 Washington is still wringing its hands over Syrian repression. "The United States is very troubled by the continuing attacks on peaceful demonstrators in Syria"-- State Dept. Harsh criticism? Maybe not in the circumstances. Anyhow the State Dept is not troubled enough to demand that Assad get out. Recall that Obama told Mubarak to get out for much less.

Syrie: les USA réclament le départ des troupes syriennes d’Hama (Guysen.International.News)Les Etats-Unis ont réclamé aujourd'hui le départ des forces syriennes de la ville d'Hama, exigeant aussi du régime qu'il cesse sa "campagne d'arrestations". "Les Etats-Unis sont très inquiets de la poursuite des attaques contre des manifestants pacifiques en Syrie", a souligné Victoria Nuland, la porte-parole du département d'Etat.

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More on Syria and Obama's policy on helping the Assad gang stay in power. [here & here& others].
The word "power" by the way reminds me of one Samantha Power, the leading humanitarian phoney in the White House on Obama's staff. She went so far as to write a book about the US failure to effectively oppose past genocide & also recommended sending troops to Israel to enforce a pro-Arab settlement on Israel.
The slaughter in Syria may not yet be genocide. But mass slaughter fits what's happening.
7-4-2011 Barry Rubin points out that the Obama White House's warm spot for the Assad regime extends to Lebanon where the Obamanoids have allowed Hizbullah, Assad's allies, to take over the govt. Rubin says that the recent indictment of 4 Hizbullah operatives for murdering former Lebanese prime minister, Rafiq Hariri, has not moved Obama to do anything concrete to punish the Hizb for that murder and others [here]
7-7-2011 John Hannah wonders about the paradox of Obama's toleration for Assad Basher while he had told Mubarak to get out shortly after the protests began in Egypt [here]
7-16-2011 Barry Rubin tries to fathom the depths of Obama's Middle Eastern policy and to identify the reasons for it [here]
7-20-2011 Hilary/Obama backtracks on harsh words for Assad. Brutality is OK and the Syrian Opposition should cooperate with Assad Basher to bring reforms -- That's Washington's message about Syria as of now and the EU falls in line [here].
Tony Badran diagnoses earlier stages of the pathology of Obama Syria policy [here]
7-21-2011 Barry Rubin picks apart a lunatic editorial in the New York Times [State Dept mouthpiece] which tells the Lebanese prime minister to be a good boy and follow through on the international tribunal's indictments of the Hizbullah operatives who organized and carried out the murder of Rafiq Hairi & a score of others, and arrest them [here]. Unless the current Lebanese PM wants to end up like Hariri, he is quite unlikely to taken any meaningful action against Hizbullah operatives as long as the Hizb controls Lebanon. But the NYT can pretend that we are living in a civilized world.
Tony Badran now diagnoses the latest stages of Obama's pathological Syria policy [here]. Should we blame Obama's mentors, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Lee Hamilton, or an ingrained and insane Third Worldism transmitted to him as a contagion from the Communist who served him as a father figure in his youth?
7-23-2011 Barry Rubin again ponders why Obama & Co. are still trying to prop up the Syrian Assad regime, although it is hated by most Syrians and is likely to be overthrown [according to Israeli intelligence] [here]. Instead of trying to work with the Syrian opposition --a heterogeneous group to be sure-- in order to keep the Muslim Brotherhood out of a future Syrian power structure as much as possible, the Obama administration throws out several fraudulent arguments. One is the lie that Israel wants Assad and his regime to stay in power. Another is the danger that the Muslim Brotherhood might take power in a post-Assad Syria. But we can't trust that as being a real concern in Washington, since Obama and others speaking for him urged the powers that be in Egypt to allow "non-secular" forces to share power in a new, post-Mubarak Egypt, and one of Obama's "national security" clowns, Clapper, even minimized the Islamist nature of the MB by falsely claiming that it was "largely secular."
7-24-2011 Lee Smith calls the Obama White House's Syria policy "morally obtuse" [here]. Smith believes that the regime is doomed.
8-3-2011 Fiamma Nirenstein on the Security Council's failure to speak out about the regime massacres in Syria [here]
8-4-2011 Catherine Ashton has given your ever loyal and ever modest blogger a helping hand. She told the world after Bashar Assad had taken "a step in the right direction" by issuing a new law permitting a multi-party political situation in Syria [here]. She did this after French foreign minister, Alain Juppe, had sneered at Assad's move as a joke and a "provocation." The rather dull-witted Mrs Ashton or Baroness Ashton is holding on to the old British position of forgiving indulgence for Assad after even Obama had taken a more hostile stance toward Assad. She helped me, as said above, because other leaders, like Obama and Juppe, had already distanced themselves more from Assad, thereby leaving me without as much to criticize in them as before. She is the EU foreign affairs commissioner and seems to be becoming an embarassment for the EU. They should throw her out now in order to maintain any semblance of decency.
8-6-2011 Jonathan Tobin reports that UNESCO, headed by former Clinton honcho, Anthony Lake, continues to give money to Syrian govt programs --money raised from American children among others, while the regime keeps on slaughtering its people and while world powers finally rebuke Assad & his regime about that [here]
8-7-2011 The Hill reports on the US public relations outfit that arranged for Assad's wife to have a profile of her done for Vogue [here]

Year-Old Latma Satire Had It Right on Assad Basher & Obama's Soft Spot for Him

UPDATING 6-2&20&22&30&7-1-2011 at bottom

The Peace in Peace Process refers to peace
of mind for Judeophobes.

Sometimes art anticipates reality, or reads reality more accurately than the professional pundits, analysts and commentators. In June of last year, the Latma satirists produced The Three Terrors, named after the three famous operatic tenors, Pavarotti, Domingo and Carreras, but modeled in character after Ahmadinejad, Erdogan [Erdung], and Assad Basher.

At one point the Assad character sings:

. . . and I a serial killer who should spend all his life in jail [chorus: oy vey, oy vey] . . .

Of course he is a serial killer. But he doesn't do it one at a time, to be sure. He slaughters en masse and his minions torture as well. Perhaps the video of Assad Basher's troops placing a protestor in the path of tank treads can convince even the hardest hearts in the West and among the anti-Israel crowd that Jews would be treated this way too, if Assad's gangsters could get a hold of them. In any case, the repeated cruelty of the Assad regime over the past 10 weeks does not seem to have much moved the Western "human rights crowd." Where are the demos in London, Paris, Milan and Berlin calling for international intervention to save millions of Arabs from Assad's butchery? Where are all the friends of the Arabs who get upset when Assad's household terrorists --those whom he deploys abroad-- shoot rockets at Israeli children, as does Hamas, and then Israel strikes back? When Israel strikes back, those unrepentant or unreconstructed Euros get angry. But when Arabs are slaughtered by Arab tyrants, we hear no public condemnation. The same goes for when Israel struck back at Hizbullah in 2006 after the Hizb raided across the border killing and kidnapping a dozen soldiers. The Euros protested then. But when the Hizb attacked fellow Arabs, civilians in Beirut, in 2008, no Euro protests were audible.

The Three Terrors does not spare Ahmadinejad whose government has been working for a nuclear bomb for some 20 years. The A-jad character thanks Obama for his help for the Iranian bomb project:

I wish to thank Obama for his patience, for playing dumb, [chorus: for playing dumb ] 'cause now I got the peace of mind to build me a nuclear bomb [chorus: the nuclear bomb]. . .

Obama and Bush before him have facilitated the Iranian Bomb project. Back in 2003 the US and other Western powers were giving A-jad "a last chance." But the last chance was not really the last. And now Iran is close to having the Bomb or has already achieved one or two such bombs.

As we said, art sometimes anticipates reality. In this case it really is not funny.
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6-1-2011 Jennifer Rubin on Obama's promised largesse to Egypt & Tunisia plus his continued indulgence of Assad Basher [here]
6-2-2011 Hilary Clinton has conducted a thorough study of the matter, using quantum mechanics, boolean algebra and supercomputers, and has scientifically, mathematically concluded that Assad Basher's ". . . legitimacy. . . is, if not gone, nearly run out." [here]. Her scientific approach included careful measurement of the legitimacy that Junior Basher had stored up when the Vogue issue came out with the puff story on his wife, the "Rose of the Desert." Hilary's patient, scientific, almost scholarly approach to this issue is why she is so highly paid.
6-10-2011 Leon Wieseltier on how Obama's Syria policy betrays both America's values and America's interests [here]
6-12-2011 Lee Smith on the good sides and bad sides of the Arab Spring [here]
Leon Hadar sees the "Arab Spring" as more a series of conflicts between tribes, politicized religious sects, powerful factions and families than as an unalloyed drive for liberal freedoms [here]
Con Coughlin has negative thoughts about the outcomes of some of the Arab Spring revolts [here]
6-15-2011 Tony Badran says that Obama doesn't want to do anything to stop Assad [here]. "Syrians are fully aware who stands behind them in the international community. In recent weeks, they have burned the flags of China, Russia, and Iran. Why haven't they burned the American flag? Perhaps it's because they still hold out hope that Washington will come to their aid. That hope is itself a form of leverage. Obama should not squander it by continuing to bet on Assad as he murders people in the street."
6-20-2011 Jackson Diehl wrote an excellent column for the Washington Post on Obama's two-faced attitude toward the Middle East, soft on Assad and tough on Israel [here]
6-22-2011 Lee Smith presents us with a powerful package of perspicacious insights about the obstacles to making peace between Israel and Syria [here]
6-30-2011 Basher Assad's little goons of the Hizbollah were busy six years ago getting rid of an enemy [or obstacle] of the Assad gang, the Hizbollah and the Iranian ayatollahs' regime [here]. This enemy was Rafiq Hariri, killed by a car bomb or truck bomb with 22 others. The Special Tribunal for Lebanon has finally submitted indictments of four Hizb leaders to Lebanese officials.
Corriere's report is [qui]
Neil MacDonald of the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. wrote up an extensive account of the STP investigation back in November 2010 [here]. This article is for those who really want to get into the subject.
7-1-2011 William Harris on the indictments of Hizbullah big guns in the Hariri murder case [here]
Michael Rubin on Obama's similarity to Assad toady Dennis Kucinich [here]
Evelyn Gordon [here] on Obama' latest Syria policy --stated by Hilary the other day. Assad should still stay in power in Syria in order to lead a "transition" to --- reforms -- in cooperation with the opposition whose rank and file he has been torturing and slaughtering for months. Is this bizarre or just weird?
Jonathan Tobin points out that the indictments of Hizbullah terrorist officials in the Hariri by the Special Tribunal on Lebanon begs the question of what Obama is going to do. Not only about Lebanon & Hizbullah but about Syria that supports and enables Hizbullah [& Iranian] domination of the Land of the Cedars. [here]

This all goes to support our theory that Obama pushed to get rid of Mubarak in Egypt while supporting Assad's staying in power in Syria for one and the same reason: His strategy is to surround Israel with hostile regimes: on the south, [Syrian-supported] Hamas in Gaza and an Egyptian govt under Muslim Brotherhood influence; in the north and northeast, Hizbullah [an arm of the Holocaust-denying Iranian ayatollahs] in Lebanon & the Iranian allied Assad regime in Syria. Bear in mind that the Assad regimes's politcal party, the Ba`ath was founded in emulation of the German Nazis. That Assad's Syria has helped the anti-American terrorists in Iraq is apparently of no consequence to Obama & his deep thinkers in DC, like Lee Hamilton & Zbig brzzzski.

Good & Bad News out of Syria, yet Obama Still Calls Assad a Reformer

Tom Gross has circulated some videos of what goes on in Syria nowadays.

First the good news. Syrian protestors burned --get this-- Iranian and Russian flags but not Israel or American flags, eventhough Obama was still pretending on Thursday, 19 May 2011, that Assad could still "lead reforms" in Syria, after two months of slaughtering Syrians who oppose the regime. In his notorious speech of that date, Obama offered Assad a choice:

President Assad now has a choice: He can lead that transition, or get out of the way. [here]

The videos are at this link.

Now the bad news. Tom and others [see the link] are circulating a video of a Syrian tank deliberately running over a wounded Syrian protestor lying on the ground. This is done twice, not once, not by mistake, by a Syrian tank helped by troops on the ground who helpfully arrange the protestor's body on the ground so that it will be directly in the way of the advancing tank's tread. The brutality and cruelty of the Syrian army to fellow Syrians, as shown on the video, are shocking. If your system is weak, you can forgo it.

Bear in mind that the anti-Israel terrorist groups, Hamas and Hizbullah, are closely allied with and much dependent on the Syrian Assad regime. The pro-genocide Iranian regime is also closely allied with Syria. Likewise, the Erdogan neo-Islamist regime in Turkey, the one that is sponsoring "freedom flotillas" to Gaza to help Hamas. Need we add that most of the world's "Left" is also pro-Assad, pro-Hamas, pro-Hizbullah, pro-Iranian [that is, in favor of the Iran of the ayatollahs].

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5-24-2011 Daniel Pipes wants Assad and his regime to go, to imscray, beat it, get ouda here, depart, croak, do 23 skiddoo or whatever you would like to call it. And Pipes gives reasons why it should disappear from the face of this Vale of Tears [here]
5-26-2011 Syrian demonstrators burn the Hizbollah flag [see video here]
5-28-2011 Michael Young on Nasrallah of Hizbullah's support for the Syrian Assad regime [here]
Michael Singh examines Syria's strategic value for Iran's ayatollahs and their aid for the Assad regime in repressing Arab opponents [here]
Suleiman al-Khalidi, of Reuters reports on his torture and jailing in Syria [here]

Why Did Obama Harshly Scold Mubarak, Demanding that He Leave, while Coddling Bashar Assad?

UPDATING 4-23&24&26&27&5-7-2011See at bottom

Many have noticed that Obama and Hilary were rough with Mubarak, telling him to leave office just a few days into the mass demonstrations in Egypt, whereas it took them two or three weeks to tell Qaddafi to get out, and whereas Washington --Obama, Hilary, the State Dept-- are still coddling Bashar [Basher] Assad. What explains this differential treatment? Many competent commentators have taken a stab at the question. Lee Smith wrote a fine article on the subject. Just this afternoon [4-22-2011, Israel Channel 1], Eyal Zisser of Tel Aviv University, pointed out that Hilary called Basher a "reformer" just a few weeks ago, albeit to widespread contempt. Zisser, like Smith, discussed the differential treatment for Mubarak who was not exceptionally bad or cruel, as Arab rulers go, and for Bashar, who --Zisser pointed out-- is being protected or coddled or treated leniently by the Washington mob. But Zisser did not claim to have an answer.

Why this differential treatment? In fact, there is one and the same answer for Obama wanting to get rid of Mubarak while keeping Assad in power. Obama and his evil advisors and mentors, like Zbig Brzezinski and Lee Hamilton, want Israel to be encircled by enemies. So Obama encourages Turkey against Israel, scoffing at the Armenian-Americans who naively supported him on account of his promise to acknowledge the Armenian genocide. He encouraged the Code Pink and Free Gaza campaigners who teamed up with the Turkish jihadists on last May's convoy to Gaza. Lee Hamilton's Woodrow Wilson Center even gave Turkish FM Davutoglu the Woodrow Wilson award a few weeks after the Mavi Marmara incident. No doubt as a reward for embarassing Israel in world public opinion.

Syria is a very hostile state on Israel's northeast which supports the equally hostile Hizbullah on Israel's north in Lebanon. Both, by the way, are clearly Judeophobic, not merely "critical" of Israel. The Hizbullah, well-armed by Iran and Syria, could not exist in Lebanon as a state within a state --as the hegemonic body in the state-- without Syrian support. Iran which is farther away threatens Israel with the Bomb and with long-distance rockets. Obama was counting on a strong, stable anti-Israel front on Israel's north and northeast to threaten and pressure Israel, joining with Western diplomatic pressure from the US, UK, EU, etc. The protest movement in Syria threatens that strong, stable anti-Israel front.

Mubarak on the other hand was cooperating with Israel on security matters, especially in regard to Hamas and Iran. To be sure, he was violating the 1979 treaty with Israel in regard to anti-Israel agitation and propaganda in the Egyptian media, schools, etc. But he was cooperating, if only minimally, on security, especially in regard to Hamas. Hamas is an offshoot of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, a sworn enemy of Mubarak, and of course a bitter enemy of Israel and the Jews based on medieval Islamic teaching. Obama wanted to much increase MB influence over Egyptian policy towards Israel, if not to bring the MB into the govt. Recall that a US official said --before Mubarak's ouster-- that "non-secular" factors in Egyptian society and politics should be brought into the govt for the sake of "democracy." "Non-secular" factors was a clear reference to the MB. And now, the post-Mubarak regime is giving in to various MB demands, warning of renegotiating the agreement for purchase of Egyptian natural gas. The two serious candidates for president of Egypt, `Amr Musa --head of the Arab League-- and the repulsive Muhammad al-Barada`i who helped along the Iranian Bomb Project, are talking against Israel, warning of intervening against any Israeli attack on the Hamas and demanding reopening of the 1979 treaty besides the gas purchase agreement. Obama's endeavors to encircle Israel with a more hostile power on the south [more hostile, less amenable to peace with Israel than Mubarak was] have borne fruit. That has happened. Note that democracy was never Obama's real concern. Demonstrators have been shot since Mubarak's ouster. Dissidents like Maikel Nabil Sanad are now in jail. Ten or more Copts were killed in clashes with MB thugs. The army damaged Coptic monasteries. Moreover, the people in Egypt are poorer and less secure economically than before the ouster, albeit things were bad then too.

So here Obama succeeded in having a more anti-Israeli front set up on the south. Yet, the northern anti-Israel front is being shaken by pesky demonstrators in Syria who demand freedom for their country and improvement in their situation. The Syrian demonstrations are a blow to Obama's encirclement strategy. So after more than a month of anti-regime protests in Syria, Obama and his Washington gang have not demanded that Assad get out. The criticisms from the State Department are relatively mild. Of course, the Assad regime is immensely more bloodthirsty than Mubarak ever was. Obama's concern is not with decency or democracy but with encircling Israel with very hostile powers. Hence, the answer to the question asked by Lee Smith and Eyal Zisser is one and the same. Obama wants to encircle and besiege Israel. Assad serves that purpose much better than Mubarak.

Also consider why Obama has been soft on Iran, friendly to Erdogan's Turkey and Pakistan [another Muslim fanatic state].

Lastly, consider the role of the so-called "left" and the so-called "human rights" organizations. These bodies, insofar as they focus their hatred on Israel, serve the anti-Israel policy of the EU, UK, and the old hatred for Jews of the US State Department. The self-styled "human rights" outfits like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch hate Israel more than they love or believe or serve the cause of human rights. The anti-Israel "Left" cares much less about exploited, ill-treated workers --in Abu Dhabi or Dubai, let us say-- or about the vast capital concentrated in the hands of the Arab oil billionaires than they do about harming Jews in Israel. They are unwitting tools at best of the UK, EU, & US State Department.

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UPDATING 4-23-2011 Can it be true that goody goody "peace groups", like CodePink for instance, can be considered "tools" of wealthy and powerful Establishment forces? Alana Goodman thinks so. She wondered why "the anti-war movement has pretty much evaporated under President Obama". She concludes that "the anti-war movement was little more than a partisan anti-Bush movement. Obama has continued most of Bush’s counterterrorism tactics, increased AfPak [Afghanistan-Pakistan] drone strikes, kept open Guantanamo Bay, sent the U.S. into a war in Libya and tinkered with Miranda rights for terrorists. And yet no massive anti-war protests greet him in California, nobody burns him in effigy, nobody chants that he’s 'the real terrorist.'" [here]
Simon Tisdall admits that Western govts are soft on Assad the Basher, some --such as the US & UK-- wanting to keep him in office supposedly for the sake of "Israel-Palestine peace efforts." The so-called "peace efforts" & "peace process" are thinly disguised efforts to weaken Israel and thereby give the Arabs a chance to finish Hitler's work. As I say above, the Obama gang wants to maintain a strong, stable anti-Israel front on Israel's northern & northeastern borders. [Tisdall here]
Walter Russell Mead points out that the reasons given for US intervention in Libya are present "in spades" in Syria. Mead also reminds us that, "For decades now, Syria has been a principal state sponsor of terrorism in the Middle East. Hezbollah and Hamas would not exist in their present forms without Syrian protection and support. On its own behalf, and as Iran’s closest strategic ally in the Arab world, Syria has a long record of arming, training and sheltering terrorists." [here]
Washington Times editorial 4-23-2011 [here] supports Alana Goodman's premise that the "anti-war movement" dried up under Obama and her conclusion that the "anti-war movement" under Bush was mainly a partisan movement cynically manipulated by Democrats [here].
4-24-2011 Elliott Abrams notes the disrepancy in Obama's positions toward Mubarak and Assad respectively. Abrams calls for stronger US action.
William Harris says that Bashar the Basher is committing war crimes. Further, Harris does not think very highly of Obama's Syria policy: "It is difficult to think of anything more obstinately counter-intuitive than Barack Obama's reluctance to give up on the Syrian dictatorship and the bankrupt policy of "engagement" [with Assad]. Morality, strategic interest, and simple good sense together demand an end to the nonsense about reforming what cannot be reformed; if it survives, the dictatorship will be so blood-soaked that no decent person could "engage" its leadership. On the other hand, a new Syria will mean a new Middle East, with the Iranian theocracy's capability in the Levant dealt a stunning reverse and new prospects for a real Arab-Israeli peace process. " [see here]
Carlo Panella has written several pieces about Syria: "Assad First Slaughters the Demonstrators, Then He Calls Them Martyrs"[in Italiano qui] e "Nazi Repression in Syria. . ." [qui] e "Assad's Opponents" qui.
Wall Street Journal on the Syria lobby in Washington [here].
4-27-2011 Aaron David Miller, ex-State Dept, informs us that "the Assads hold a special place in the schemes and dreams of U.S. policymakers." But, but. They're bloodthirsty bastards, aren't they? How could Washington possibly like them? [here]
Lee Smith asks "Why Is Obama Protecting Assad?" [here]. He quotes Michael Doran who writes that Obama was counting on Assad's Syria to be part of a general, comprehensive "peace" agreement between Israel and the Arab states. Doran writes: “the Obama administration has made the Arab-Israeli peace process the organizing principle of its Middle East policy.” Getting rid of Assad would somehow thwart that purpose. Doran implies that Assad staying in power in Syria is essential to this "peace" strategy. Doran doesn't explain why a Syrian govt without the Assad clan could not also make "peace" or even peace with Israel. Or be just as likely or just as unlikely to do so.
Lee Smith concludes: "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?" [here]. What Lee Smith and Doran say fits in with what Aaron David Miller wrote: "the Assads hold a special place in the schemes and dreams of U.S. policymakers."
Syrian oppositionist Farid Ghadry asks where the West is in Syria's time of travail. He especially wants to know why Erdogan of Turkey wants to send a "freedom flotilla" to Hamas-ruled Gaza but is not interested in sending a similar "freedom flotilla" to the Syrian people [here].
Elliott Abrams on Obama's Syria policy [here]
Julian Borger on British Syria policy since Junior Basher rose to power in 2000 [here]
St Andrews University in Britain said to be embarassed over Syrian funding for a "Syrian Studies" center [here]. A pimp of the pen like Patrick Seale, a toady for the Syrian regime, is an advisor to the center.
Washington Times editorial scolding Obama's policy ["The Nobama Doctrine"] & calling for intervention to save the Syrian people [here]
Lee Smith has more on why Obama & Company are soft on the Assads [here]: ". . . in place of a rational intellect and a moral center, all the White House has is an imaginary peace process, a pipe dream that requires the “reform-minded” Bashar al-Assad to come to his senses and engage with Washington."
4-30-2011 James Traub gives reasons why he thinks that Western powers were so fond of Syria and Bashar the Basher [here]
Elliott Abrams complains about the soft Obama adminstration response to Syrian govt physical abuse of an American diplomat [here]
Jonathan Spyer takes on the Israeli fools [Uri Sagi, Alon Liel, etc] who want a "deal" with Assad's Syria and need the West to prop him up until that will o'the wisp eventuality [here]
Barry Rubin points out that Assad's Syria has never been a real partner for peace for Israel despite what the Obama and previous US administrations have "believed" or pretended to believe. This should have been known and understood in the West as far back as the 1960s. [I believe that it probably was understood in the West]. He goes on to point out the danger of surrendering Israel's natural defense of the Golan Heights to Syria. How can we know in advance that the Assad gang or any succeeding regime in Syria will keep a peace treaty with Israel if it controls the strategic advantage of the Golan Heights? [here]
Barry Rubin points out that everybody --every Western govt, in particular-- should have [& could have] known just how bad the Syrian regime was many years ago. But up till the recent revolt, the Western govts were playing dumb about Junior Assad, Bashar the Basher [here].
Another piece by Barry Rubin, if combined with his two articles linked to above on Syria, supports my argument that Obama and his gang want Israel to be surrounded by hostile powers. Barry might not agree explicitly with my sound inferences from his analyses.
5-7-2011 Barry Rubin despairs over any decent response to the Syria crisis emerging from Washington's Foggy Bottom [and Foggy Top][here]

Academic Slug Fawns over Junior Assad -- Maybe Because Hitler Isn't around anymore

UPDATING 4-3&5&12&21&24-2011 See at bottom

If you want to measure the slimy creepiness of much of American academia, take a look at David Lesch of Trinity University in Texas. He entitled a fawning biography of Bashar al-Assad, The New Lion of Damascus [Yale U Press 2005]. Wouldn't it be nice to have someone describe you as a lion. I would be flattered. Now if I could only convince my wife. Anyhow, Lesch, who teaches Middle East history, apparently knows enough Arabic to know that the word assad means lion. Isn't that cute? His name means lion so we can be cute and call the swine a lion.

Lesch published a semi-moronic op ed in the NYTimes today in which he strains to tell us that Assad isn't really like that real bad guy, Qaddafi. Actually, Assad is likely much worse which we may see in coming days. But Lesch is full of regret that Assad didn't do what Middle East expert David Lesch thought that he ought to do. Who says there's no humor in the academic world? Lesch does a great parody. Here he describes Junior Assad:

. . . he had begun to equate his well-being with that of his country, and the sycophants around him reinforced the notion.

See, what Junior did wrong was really the fault of the sycophants around him. Lesch is très adroit at identifying sycophants. I guess it takes one to know one. Let's let Lesch let loose his toadying nature:

I believed he had good intentions, if awkwardly expressed at times.

See, Junior Bashar [or Basher?] had "good intentions." Who would doubt it? At least our expert from Trinity U "believed" it. Maybe Hitler probably had "good intentions" too, or at least the David Lesches of that time would have believed it.
This is what passes for political understanding in American academia, in Washington and at the NYTimes.

Martin Kramer wrote that Lesch was "fawning" toward Assad in his book. That's the word for it. A commenter on Kramer's facebook page [where I found the links תודה רבה] went further with that.

Fawning . . . couldn't be more accurate. Lesch states in his preface "I find the story of [Asad's] rise to power as president of Syria a compelling one". Being the son of a dictator does not make for a compelling story about a "rise" to "presidency" no matter how you characterize it. It's nepotism and despotism through and through. One day people will question how these "liberal" writers came to fall in love with dictators. [Ryan Kashfian - kudos to you from Eliyahu]

So we have reached a state where commenters on facebook have more insight and common sense than profs of Middle Eastern history and NYT op ed authors. Bear in mind that when Muslim Brotherhood enemies of Assad Junior's father, Hafiz, were using the city of Hama as a center for terrorism against the Syrian state and against members of Assad's own Alawi sect [1982], Senior Assad had his artillery pound the city for several days. The usual estimates of dead in Hama run from 10,000 to 30,000, with most estimates around 20,000. Yet Lesch fawned over the son as if he were different. More recently, in early 2005, Junior had Rafiq Hariri, the former prime minister of Lebanon, assassinated by a massive truck bomb in Beirut. Yet Hariri had been an obedient pawn of Senior and Junior Assad for years. When Hariri showed signs of disobedience, he was eliminated. Most Lebanese and most knowledgeable outside observers blamed Junior for the murder. But Lesch doesn't so much as mention Hariri in the NYT op ed, let alone how he departed this Vale of Tears. Since Lesch's biog of Junior was published in 2005, the same year as the assassination, I wonder if it was maybe mentioned in the book. On the other hand, Lesch does mention Lebanon in the op ed but in such a way as to make Junior Assad seem like an anti-imperialist while acting as an imperialist himself:

Contrary to American interests, he [Assad] firmly believes Lebanon should be within Syria’s sphere of influence.

Can you contain your admiration for Junior's defiance of America and his overflowing Syrian patriotism? So much for Junior Assad whom we will be hearing a lot more about in coming days I trust. Now, let's think about his chic and elegant wife, Asma. She used to be a banker at J P Morgan, Lesch tells us. And, he unfortunately fails to mention, Asma was the recent subject of a flattering photo feature in the ultra-fashionable Vogue [search for it on google. I didn't save the link]. With an ophthalmologist husband and her own pre-marriage career as a banker, Asma is about as good a safe, decent, trustworthy, civilized bourgeoise matron as you could want.
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Jeff Jacoby about Junior Assad & his admirer, Barack Obama.
British & American academic pimps working for Mu`ammar Qaddafi [here]. A useful listing of Harvard and LSE denizens working to polish the image of the author of The Green Book Qaddafi's attempt to imitate Mao Tse Tung.
4-9-2011 William Harris describes the situation in Syria [here]. But the Syrian problem is not only in Syria. Harris tells us, that ". . . Western governments . . . have always had a soft spot for the Syrian dictatorship . . . identifying Bashar as a 'reformer.'"

Lesch's testimony before the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee [2007]. Here are some gems:
"Bashar has a progressive and modernizing outlook" --
"I have seen him grown into the position with more confidence and more of a comfort level since I've been meeting with him.
"He has been on the upswing politically, domestically and even regionally, since surviving the intense pressure of the . . . investigation into the Hariri assassination, in part by default, because of mounting U.S. problems in the region and also partly due to his own maneuvering. I think the makeup of the February 2006 cabinet reshuffling in Damascus was a clear reflection of this upswing."
Lesch told the Senate Committee that his hero was on "the upswing."
More gems from David Louche [Lesch?].

Now, about Lesch himself. Could he be related somehow to Ann Mosely Lesch, also a sort of Middle East expert who worked or "served" for some time as an American Friends Service Committee field rep in the Land of Israel in the mid-1970s?
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4-11-2011 Ramesh Thakur tries to explain why universities go for corrupting cash from Arab dictators and other unsavory types. He is too soft on the univs. They have been corrupt for decades.
4-12-2011 Harvard profs pimp for Qaddafi [here]. Martin Kramer comments on the same issue. A live interview with a Harvard prof critical of pimping for Libya in Harvard's name.
4-14-2011 Tony Badran's take on the babboonish Syria watchers, like Lesch [here]
4-2-2011 Fiamma Nirenstein rightly complains that Washington pretends that Syria is democratic [qui in Italiano].
5-24-2011 Martin Kramer reports on another thrust of brilliant wit, another priceless bon mot from the silver tongue of David Lesch, Professorus Most Respectibus [hic], doctor honestissimus et decensissimus. Certe, this good, simple and decent man tells of his bonding with Junior Assad --known in these parts as Bashar the Basher-- as a fellow father concerned with his kiddies. Junior told honestissimus that he sang "The Itsy Bitsy Spider" with his bright and beaming children. Martin Kramer, awestruck at all this Damascene decency, as I am too, I confess, commented: "Ah a good man at heart." Dearest darling, bring me another hankie, please.

Western States Overlooked Arab Tyranny on account of Their Own Israelophobia

Anti-Zionism is the anti-imperialism of fools

Lee Smith does it again. He wrote a perceptive, excellent analysis of the Arab Spring revolts, their connection to Israel or lack of same, the reason for the latest terrorist attacks on Israel [including rocket attacks], and the failure of US and other Western policymakers to foresee what was coming or to understand it.

Here are some excerpts:
Regarding the rockets attacks on Israel from Gaza and the terrorist bombing in Jerusalem [to which I would add the recent massacre of five members of the Fogel family in Itamar], Smith writes that the recent revolts against Arab regimes from Tunis to Yemen to Syria [among the most notable] occurred:

without the slightest apparent connection to popular outrage against Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians . . . .

That these revolts were motivated by resentments against local, homegrown tyrants who oppressed and impoverished their own peoples while most of the rest of the world was growing more prosperous:

should be surprising to most experts and politicians in the West. For over four decades, the driving idea behind the West’s approach to the Middle East has been the supposed centrality of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process to Arab popular anger at the West and its key to ensuring the stability of the West’s favored regimes. That the price tag for this American diplomatic instrument has been thousands of dead Jews and several lost generations of Arabs has, in the upside-down world of Mideast policymakers, made the achievement of an ever-elusive peace deal seem all the more important with every passing year

That all that mattered to the Arabs generally was the alleged "plight of Palestinians" and "Israeli occupation",

was a convenient point of agreement between Washington policymakers and Arab regimes. For Washington, the peace process was a good source of photo ops and a chance to show concern for human rights in the region without interfering with the propensity of America’s Arab allies to torture and murder their political opponents. As for the regimes, they were happy to escape criticism of their own failures—rampant corruption, lack of basic human rights and freedoms, and violence against the Arabs they rule—by blaming Israel. . . .

By pushing the centrality of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for the past four decades, the West has helped to underwrite Arab repression at home. The rationale behind the emergency laws in places like Syria and Egypt (even now after Cairo’s “revolution”) is that because of the war with Israel, the Arab security states must be ever-vigilant and therefore forbid their people from exercising basic rights like freedom of speech—or, in the words of Gamal Abdel Nasser, “no voice louder than the cry of battle”—diktats that they enforce through torture and murder.

In view of the Arab popular revolts,

the Israeli-Palestinian peace process isn’t even a convenient fiction by which Washington can make nice to the Arabs. Rather, it has been a recipe for failure on a grand scale—social, political, and economic—that has now been laid bare. While the Arab regimes are being held responsible for their failures by their fed-up populations, Washington seems to feel no need to hold itself accountable for the collapse of a set of enabling fictions that has greatly diminished our position in a region that is of crucial strategic importance for the United States both militarily and economically

In this context, who was behind the recent terrorist attacks on Israel:

So, who might have an interest in the sort of disruption and realignments the Jerusalem bus bombing has caused? Maybe it was the Syrians tapping a few of their Palestinian assets to heat things up in Israel. . . .
Or perhaps it was the Islamic Republic of Iran, attacking Israel through proxies. . . .

Bear in mind that

President Barack Obama failed to support the protesters who took to the streets for Iran’s Green Revolution in June 2009

Nor has Obama yet called for Assad to give up power, about three weeks after the Syrian protests began, although he called for Mubarak to give up just three days after the start of the mass protests in Cairo. How do we explain the discrepancies? Apparently, Obama and the rest of his crowd of policymakers in Washington like the Assad regime. Recall that Obama sent Zbig Brzezinski to Damascus to meet with Assad & Co. in February 2008, nine months before the presidential election. He wanted Assad to know that if Obama were elected president, Assad would have a friend in the White House.

Smith stresses the Washington obsession with the "peace process" which is strong enough to override common sense and overrule a proper concern for human rights and general decency in politics:

Whoever attacked Israel last week knows how the game works, too, and sure enough in short order the U.S. policy community jumped to attention. Instead of pushing to cut off the regime in Damascus as the Syrian people braved death to go the streets, American policymakers like Sen. John Kerry and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton offered their bona fides. “There is a different leader in Syria now,” Clinton said of the man believed responsible for ordering the murder of Hariri. “Many of the members of Congress of both parties who have gone to Syria in recent months have said they believe he’s a reformer.” [that is, Junior Assad is a "reformer"] Never mind that her own State department says rather that Syria is a state sponsor of terror; Washington will do nothing to help the Syrians who’ve come out against their own government, because the U.S. president is going to make good on his word to engage dictators, no matter how many Arabs have to die as he proves his point.

In other words, Smith shows that Washington policy is less concerned with Arab welfare than with enforcing a humiliating, dangerous, likely genocidal, "peace process" on Israel. Smith also demolishes the "linkage" argument, that is, that everything happening in Arab politics is really caused by what Israel does or does not do. This argument supplies an excuse to always pressure Israel no matter what happens among the Arabs. In my opinion, some Western policymakers have been and still are ready to fight Israel to the last Arab. So obviously they couldn't understand why Arabs wouldn't share their obsession with Israel and their eagerness to fight Israel [through the instrumentality of the Arabs], despite the Arabs' own abysmal social & economic situation. This paragraph is my own and does not represent Lee Smith. I conclude that the "peace process" is in essence a Judeophobic endeavor unconnected to any real search for peace.

By the way, Smith provides some interesting info about Olmert's role in the "peace process" and his connection to Washington [here]