On one level, the news from Syria is encouraging–Bashar Assad’s regime is losing ground. The rebel forces are fighting on the outskirts of the capital and have managed to capture several military bases, at least temporarily. Many analysts think that the Syrian army is cracking–a plausible if perhaps premature conclusion at this point.
But there is still cause for alarm, not only in the fact that the killing continues, but also in the fact that it is hard-line Salafists who appear to be making the biggest military gains on the ground, to the consternation of more secular rebels, thus raising the specter of Syria becoming a Taliban-like state after Assad’s downfall–or, at the very least, the specter of Taliban-like extremists gaining control of substantial territorial enclaves. If that were to occur, the U.S. would have no to blame but itself because the Obama administration’s current policy of not arming the rebels is providing Persian Gulf states such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar with an opening to shape the uprising in their own twisted image.
The Washington Post has a telling quote from a rebel leader:
“The lack of support by the international community has led to a situation where support is coming from the gulf states and from Syrian businessmen in those states,” Col. Malik Kurdi, a spokesman for the rebel Free Syrian Army, said in an interview. “These are people who have the ideology of Salafis and the Muslim Brotherhood. They started supporting groups who have the same ideology in Syria, and some adopted this ideology to get financial support.”
The newspaper goes on to note that while many jihadist groups have emerged in Syria, the most successful one is “Jabhat al-Nusra, which is thought to have links to al-Qaeda.” It has “asserted responsibility for a series of suicide attacks against military and security targets,” and it has “overrun at least two government military bases in the past two weeks, collecting weapons left behind by Syrian troops.”
Even if Assad appears to be in danger of falling (and such impressions can be deceiving–he has been frustrating predictions of his demise for almost two years now), it is imperative that the U.S. do more to help the opposition so as to shape the nature of the post-Assad regime.
I know it sounds heartless, but…am I the only one who hopes this war never ends? n nIran can keep spending its money trying to prop up their dictator there, Turkey can keep playing nice with us in case it needs our support for a wider war, and the Islamist crazies have a place to do what they like best — kill their fellow Muslims.
No I am with you. Let it be their Vietnam and 30 Years War all wrapped up in one slow motion Central African style genocide. Arab states all eventually tend toward the least unstable form of fascist insanity no matter the outside pressures and influences.
And the longer this goes on, the better chance the Kurds – the only reliable friend of the West, and that despite being abandoned and kicked when they were down, by the West – will have of establishing a full-fledged control of their territory. nOTOH, any "help" from Obama will likely be to the detriment of Kurds.
Funny how Turkey, in all its NATO membership regalia, “played nice” by preventing the US from entering Northern Iraq in its planned attack against Saddam Hussein thus forcing the US to change plans midway and increasing the hazzards faced by the troops.
Nah, you're not alone, blue. Where my thoughts part ways with my fellow neocons is in the liberal notion that eveyone has the same middle class dreams of a peaceful, prosperous life with safe and cherished kids and that the West can help to bring this about. By now we should have learned that this rather basic cultural-materialist view is a Western cultural paradigm, a big sappy wish sprinkled with hope really, and that it doesn't hold true for everyone. The Muslim world is being true to its nature, expressing its values and being for what they are is inevitably collapsing on all fronts …on the religious, social, national, political and economic. Our assistance should only be aimed at keeping their kerfaffle from spreading too far or affecting us and our allies. And trying to guess who the "good guys" are is, as K2K points out, a fool's game. In any case, it's a futile exercise, since there are really no "good guys" in this grim struggle.
as if the USA will do anything to upset the Saudis. n nSyria is France's problem. Let the French jump into the mother of all post-colonial quagmires, assuming the French can tear themselves away from Mali and Congo. n nI find it incredulous that any American "pundit" still thinks the USA, under ANY president, has good enough intelligence to know who the "good guys" are in Syria.
Max Boot is WRONG on Syria. No matter who is the dominant force in any post Assad regime it will be as bad as the Assads. It's like a Democ-rat Primary–up to your neck in manure and its thrown at your face.