Foreign Policy: Even before President Barack Obama put his plans to strike the Syrian regime on hold, he was losing the battle of public opinion about military intervention. Part of the credit, no doubt, goes to a successful media blitz by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime and its supporters. In an interview aired on Monday night, Assad himself advanced his government’s case to Charlie Rose, saying that the United States had not presented “a single shred of evidence” proving the Syrian military had used chemical weapons.
Assad has always been able to skillfully parry Western journalists’ criticisms of his regime — and, at times, it has won him positive international coverage. Before the uprising, the U.S. media often described the Assad family as Westernized leaders who were trying to bring their country into the 21st century. The most infamous example was Vogue‘s profile of Asma al-Assad, which described Syria’s first lady as “a thin, long-limbed beauty with a trained analytic mind … [with] a killer IQ.” But even experts in the field went along: Middle East historian David Lesch wrote a biography of Bashar describing the president as a modernizer, before changing his mind during the uprising.
The carnage over the past two and a half years put an end to much of this praise — but now pro-Assad media outlets have found a new way to influence the American debate. Assad supporters’ claims have repeatedly been republished unquestioningly by right-wing commentators in the United States, who share their hostility toward both Sunni Islamists and the Obama administration. It’s a strange alliance between American conservatives and a regime that was one of America’s first designated state sponsors of terror, and continues to work closely with Iran and Hezbollah.
“There is evidence — mounting evidence — that the rebels in Syria did indeed frame Assad for the chemical attack,” conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh told his audience on Sept. 3. “But not only that, but Obama, the regime, may have been complicit in it. Mounting evidence that the White House knew and possibly helped plan the Syrian chemical weapon attack by the opposition!”
Limbaugh’s cited an article by Yossef Bodansky on Global Research, a conspiracy website that has advanced a pro-Assad message during the current crisis. “How can the Obama administration continue to support and seek to empower the opposition which had just intentionally killed some 1,300 innocent civilians?” Bodansky asked.
Bodansky is an ally of Bashar’s uncle, Rifaat al-Assad — he pushed him as a potential leader of Syria in 2005. Rifaat is the black sheep of the Assad family: He spearheaded the Syrian regime’s brutal crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood in the early 1980s, but then was forced into exile after he tried to seize power from his brother, President Hafez al-Assad, in 1983. Despite his ouster, however, Rifaat is just as hostile to a Sunni Islamist takeover as other members of the Assad family — a position Bodansky appears to share. Ending Alawite rule in Syria, Bodansky wrote on another pro-Assad website, “will cause cataclysmic upheaval throughout the greater Middle East.” [Continue reading…]
Ironically the Left has served Assad equally well by undermining Obama’s own power base. Just as when Libya was on the agenda, the left has been yapping about Imperialism and completely impervious to the millions of Syrians affected by this.
FP is throwing stones in glass houses.
One of the most depressing developments in the US over the last decade is that xenophobia and isolationism seems to have just as strong a foothold among the Left as it does on the Right. The war on terrorism was such a huge success in terms of twisting the way people think, that even among those who opposed the war’s military expressions, many have mindlessly swallowed its ideological presuppositions, and thus Assad has found it ridiculously easy to cast his opponents as “terrorists”.
Since before he even entered the White House, I have never hesitated to criticize Obama. He has no convictions; he yields to pressure from any direction; and it’s often hard to understand why he even wanted to become president. And yet, when people view his every word and action with skepticism and suspicion and at the very same time lend a sympathetic ear to Bashar al-Assad — a man who bears the primary responsibility for the deaths of over 100,000 and for making 25% of Syrians homeless — their capacity for independent political judgement has become seriously impaired.
I couldn’t agree more Paul.
Juan Cole, who I have great respect for after the grief he got for backing action against Ghaddaffi wrote a piece that supported non-violent pressure on Assad today:
http://www.juancole.com/2013/09/president-doubtful-military.html
I responded:
I’m surprised Juan that you are taking this tack on Syria after your much appreciated support for US action against Ghaddaffi’s forces by enforcing a no-fly zone. Here in Syria as time progresses things are getting worse for the rebel forces and their message gradually diluted into “Islamist” and “factional” opposition forces.
The same fate would have befallen the Libyan rebels eventually and there would have been hundreds of thousands of deaths along the way.
Then the threat to Bengazi made the focus imminent. Here we only have chemical weapons as a trigger otherwise its just the barely newsworthy atrocities of a few hundred casualties here and there and the ignored plight of millions of refugees.
The reality is that things will keep going in this direction and Assad will cement his grip on the country.
The use of force to destroy Assad’s capability to control the skies would force Assad to retrench in the Allawite coastal heartland and force him to negotiate a peace likely leading to a decentralized federalized or partitioned Syria that may or may not unify in the future.
To simply call for non-violent responses here is naive. Bank accounts aren’t needed to slowly decimate the resistance just access to Iranian and Russian arms and overwhelming control of the air.
What happened to you Juan?
“There is evidence — mounting evidence — that the rebels in Syria did indeed frame Assad for the chemical attack,” conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh told his audience on Sept. 3. “But not only that, but Obama, the regime, may have been complicit in it. Mounting evidence that the White House knew and possibly helped plan the Syrian chemical weapon attack by the opposition!”
Limbaugh’s cited an article by Yossef Bodansky on Global Research, a conspiracy website that has advanced a pro-Assad message during the current crisis. “How can the Obama administration continue to support and seek to empower the opposition which had just intentionally killed some 1,300 innocent civilians?
Bodansky’s article is also part of the set of sources for this piece by an anti-war progressive , active in leftist pacifist circles , Ray McGovern. http://consortiumnews.com/2013/09/06/obama-warned-on-syrian-intel/
When I read through that piece by Ray McGovern, I recalled seeing that phrase,”“a war-changing development,” elsewhere, recently. http://www.globalresearch.ca/did-the-white-house-help-plan-the-syrian-chemical-attack/5347542 (Bodansky) Compare paragraphs in Bodansky’s piece with McGovern’s. “On August 13-14, 2013, Western-sponsored opposition forces in Turkey started advance preparations for a major and irregular military surge. Initial meetings between senior opposition military commanders and representatives of Qatari, Turkish, and US Intelligence [“Mukhabarat Amriki”] took place at the converted Turkish military garrison in Antakya, Hatay Province, used as the command center and headquarters of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and their foreign sponsors. Very senior opposition commanders who had arrived from Istanbul briefed the regional commanders of an imminent escalation in the fighting due to “a war-changing development” which would, in turn, lead to a US-led bombing of Syria.
The opposition forces had to quickly prepare their forces for exploiting the US-led bombing in order to march on Damascus and topple the Bashar al-Assad Government, the senior commanders explained. The Qatari and Turkish intelligence officials assured the Syrian regional commanders that they would be provided with plenty of weapons for the coming offensive.
Indeed, unprecedented weapons distribution started in all opposition camps in Hatay Province on August 21-23, 2013. In the Reyhanli area alone, opposition forces received well in excess of 400 tons of weapons, mainly anti-aircraft weaponry from shoulder-fired missiles to ammunition for light-guns and machineguns. The weapons were distributed from store-houses controlled by Qatari and Turkish Intelligence under the tight supervision of US Intelligence.” Bodansky.
“In addition, we have learned that on August 13-14, 2013, Western-sponsored opposition forces in Turkey started advance preparations for a major, irregular military surge. Initial meetings between senior opposition military commanders and Qatari, Turkish and U.S. intelligence officials took place at the converted Turkish military garrison in Antakya, Hatay Province, now used as the command center and headquarters of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and their foreign sponsors.
Senior opposition commanders who came from Istanbul pre-briefed the regional commanders on an imminent escalation in the fighting due to “a war-changing development,” which, in turn, would lead to a U.S.-led bombing of Syria.
At operations coordinating meetings at Antakya, attended by senior Turkish, Qatari and U.S. intelligence officials as well as senior commanders of the Syrian opposition, the Syrians were told that the bombing would start in a few days. Opposition leaders were ordered to prepare their forces quickly to exploit the U.S. bombing, march into Damascus, and remove the Bashar al-Assad government…” McGovern et. al. w/the others in the Steering Group, of the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity .