Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Saud Al-Faisal told Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Tunis that backing an armed insurgency against Syria’s Bashar al-Assad “is an excellent idea.” He told her that because she asked his opinion, which means she’s thinking about it, as well.
The Iraqi insurgency soured most Americans on the idea of helping Arab countries get rid of a tyrant, but our interests in the region haven’t changed. Our biggest problem then as now is the Iranian- and Syrian-led resistance bloc, consisting not only of the odious regimes in Tehran and Damascus, but also their networks of terrorist organizations and insurgent groups from the Levant to Mesopotamia.
Assad isn’t only just now becoming a headache. He backed anti-American and anti-Iraqi Sunni death squads and suicide bombers to the hilt. His family has spent decades arming an array of terrorist organizations that menace our friends and allies in Israel and Lebanon. And the longer the revolution continues, the more freelance foreign al-Qaeda fighters will pour into the country to “help.”
We aren’t the only ones wondering whether or not we should support the insurrection, or at least parts of it. If the United States doesn’t do it, the Saudis and Turks may do it themselves. Al-Qaeda fighters will most likely show up, if they haven’t already. Another question we’re going to have to start asking ourselves is whether or not we want any leverage in Syria after Assad is deposed. A hostile Islamist government in Damascus is far more likely to follow Baathist Syria if the Saudis and Turks decide who gets guns instead of us.
Sure, let's. It worked out so well in Iraq and Libya. And the Egyptians just love us now.
I agree with Grumpy Old Man. The situation in Syria is not a struggle between the forces of darkness and the forces of light. It is a fight between a dictatorship and a future Islamist regime. It offers no benefits to the United States or western Europe to get involved in it. We will simply end up spending – and wasting – billions more of our money to protect, defend, reconstruct, and rebuild and train the army of a future enemy.r nr nMust we pretend naivete and blindness to appease a part of the world that is already taking us for all they can get? If we get involved, we deserve all the shame that will be heaped up us.
The Saudis, Al Qaeda, and Obama all want to arm the insurgency. And the Muslim Brotherhood agree with all this. So that tells us that George Soros is working on it like he did the Egyptian revolution. And that what we are being told about it by elected officials is far from accurate.
So far grand strategies and projected alliances with Arab or Islamic keystone partners haven't worked out all that well. The sands shift and you find yourself with feet in mutually armed and exclusive hostile camps or left out of the last round of musical chairs altogether. n nI hope the next Saudi bright idea isn't to arm Hamas (unlikely at this point but who knows) but the conzeptia that the arms flows can be tracked and monitored and channeled and tweaked without staggering investments of bureaucratic and boots on the ground time and money is a mirage. Arming the muhajadeen via Pakistan's ISI turned into a slow-motion fast and furious. Does the United States really need to get involved in a poorly understood grudge match between Sunni emirates with Turkey against the Persians and the Alawites when the players involved are still coming to terms with whom their next designated enemy is going to be? n n If America wants to go in directly, alone or in a coalition well, you gotta do what you gotta do, but we have tended lately to end up at our starting point however so many years later. The bright idea that, well we can't do that because of a, b, yadda yadda so we'll try some indirect 8-ball carom shot off the side pockets is not all that well grounded.
If there's a reasonable chance that the Assad regime can be overthrown and replaced with a government hostile to Iran, the US should certainly help that process along. Who cares if the new regime is "democratic" or not? We have here a golden opportunity to strip the Iranian ayatollahs of a key ally. And considering the base brutality of the Assad regime, this appears to me to be one of those cases where, as Margaret Thatcher put it, doing the right thing would also be doing the expedient thing.
The Saudis want to arm the insurgents because Syria is ruled by Alawites (a heretical minority). It is no surprise that the US agrees. After all, US policy in the Middle East, especially with regard to Iran, is a reflection of Saudi foreign policy. The Saudis fear the Iranians and despise them as heretical Shiites. They didn't like Mubarak either. We oppose Iran and Syria, and bolster the Muslim Brotherhood, yet ignore the most corrupt and oppressive regime in the Middle East. The Saudis! Amazing.
I agree with Tom Gregg. Let’s assume that what replaces Assad will be either chaos or Islamist. It’s still worth it if we can break the ‘Shia crescent’ and cut Hezbullah off from their Iranian supply lines.