[Peace-discuss] obama a born-again Neo-con - Bill Kristol

Wed Mar 30 23:56:24 CDT 2011

Neocons Target Assad Regime
by Jim Lobe, March 31, 2011

Despite the clear opposition the Obama administration and apparent ambivalence 
on the part of the right-wing government in Israel, neoconservative hawks here 
have set their sights on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad who they hope will be 
the next domino to fall victim to what the so-called "Arab Spring."

In a much-noted op-ed published Saturday by the Washington Post, Elliot Abrams, 
who served as George W. Bush’s top Mideast adviser, called for the 
administration to take a series of diplomatic and economic measures similar to 
those taken against Libya before the U.S. and NATO’s military intervention, to 
weaken Assad’s hold on power and embolden the opposition.

He was joined the same day by the Wall Street Journal‘s hard-line editorial page 
which urged Washington to support the opposition "in as many ways as possible."

"It’s impossible to know who would succeed Assad if his minority Alawite regime 
fell, but it’s hard to imagine many that would be worse for U.S. interests," the 
Journal‘s editorial board asserted, while its increasingly neoconservative 
counterpart at the Washington Post, which last week called Assad "an 
unredeemable thug," urged the administration to side "decisively with those in 
Syria seeking genuine change."

And on Tuesday, a major candidate for the 2012 Republican presidential 
nomination, former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, chimed in with a full-throated 
endorsement of Abrams’ recommendations and described Assad himself as a "killer."

The latest campaign, which comes as the administration finds itself ever more 
deeply embroiled in a civil war in Libya and remains pre-occupied by challenges 
to friendly regimes in Bahrain and Yemen, was launched as it became clear over 
the past week that Assad faces what most observers here believe is the biggest 
crisis of his nearly 11-year-old reign.

More than 60 people have reportedly been killed in clashes between protestors 
and police around the country since demonstrations erupted in the southern town 
of Deraa two weeks ago.

Expectations that Assad, who dismissed his government Tuesday, would announce a 
series of reforms, including an end to a nearly 50-year-old emergency law, were 
dashed Wednesday when he blamed "conspiracies" for the unrest in a speech to 
parliament. Although he suggested that major reforms were indeed impending, he 
failed to specify either what they were or when they might be implemented.

"There will be more demonstrations," predicted Bassam Haddad, a Syria expert at 
George Mason University, who added that the regime remains divided between 
reformists and conservatives. "If Bashar gets his way, I feel the response [to 
further protests] will be mild. But if the hard-liners get their way, there will 
be a crackdown that will have a snowball effect and that could turn into a 
nightmare for the regime."

That would likely be welcomed by the neoconservatives some of whom have already 
suggested that a violent repression will enable them to invoke Washington’s 
intervention against Libya as a precedent for taking strong action against his 
regime.

The Obama administration, which has tried to engage Damascus as part of a 
broader strategy to weaken its alliance with Iran, has regarded Assad himself as 
reform-minded, but limited in his ability to move against an entrenched 
opposition in the security forces and his ruling Baath party.

On Sunday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton described Assad as a "different 
leader," noting that "many of the members of Congress who have gone to Syria in 
recent months have said they believe he’s a reformer."

The remark infuriated neoconservatives who have long considered the Assad 
dynasty as Public Enemy Number Two, after Iran, in the Middle East due to its 
ties with Tehran, its long-standing support for Lebanon’s Hezbollah and 
Palestine’s Hamas, and, since the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, its alleged 
backing for Sunni insurgents there.

Indeed, the notorious 1996 "Clean Break" memo that was prepared for 
then-incoming Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu by several prominent 
neoconservatives who, seven years later, would take senior posts in the Bush 
administration, depicted the overthrow of Saddam Hussein as one crucial step in 
a larger strategy designed to destabilize Syria.

During the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, Abrams reportedly urged 
Israel’s defense minister to expand Israel’s bombing campaign to include targets 
inside Syria, a course that was supported publicly by other neoconservatives 
outside the administration. To their frustration, the Israelis rejected their 
advice.

Neoconservatives and their Congressional allies have fought tooth and nail 
against efforts by the Obama administration to begin normalizing relations with 
Damascus that were effectively broken off by the Bush administration after it 
blamed the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in 
Beirut on Assad’s regime.

Now, however, they clearly believe that the Arab Spring has presented a new 
opportunity for "regime change" in Damascus, one that must be seized with delay.

Abrams, who exerted a major influence on the Bush’s policy toward Syria, has 
called in particular for the administration to strongly and continuously 
denounce the regime, withdraw its ambassador, press for international action 
against Assad, including seeking his indictment by the International Criminal 
Court and using Washington’s influence with the new governments in Egypt and 
Tunisia to persuade the Arab League, which expelled Libya earlier this month, to 
apply the same sanction to Damascus.

But, aside from condemning specific incidents of violence by the security 
forces, as well as an expression of disappointment Wednesday at Assad’s speech 
before parliament, the administration has shown no inclination to follow this 
advice.

"Washington already has its hands full in the Middle East," noted Dov Zakheim, 
who served in a senior Pentagon post under Bush. "In an environment in which 
American forces are engaged in three Muslim countries, the last thing Washington 
needs is to verbally trap itself in a situation in which pressure for yet more 
military action begins to mount," he wrote in the Shadow Government blog at 
foreignpolicy.com Monday.

"The last thing the United States need is to get enmeshed in Syria’s troubles," 
he added, noting that "[a]n unstable Syria might be tempted, as neither Assad 
pere nor fils were, to attack Israel on the Golan front, or to push Hezbollah 
into a war that Damascus would then widen…"

Similarly, Paul Pillar, a retired CIA analyst who served as National 
Intelligence Officer for the Middle East between 2000 and 2005, warned that 
regime change could turn out very poorly for both the U.S. and Israel and that 
Abrams’ and the Journal’s confidence that any successor regime would be 
preferable to Assad’s was ill-founded.

"Syria under Assad is probably the most secular place in the Middle East," he 
noted in his blog at the nationalinterest.org website. "The influence of 
Islamism, in whatever form, in Syria has nowhere to go but up if there is regime 
change. That would not be welcome to those in Israel and the United States who 
worry about any political role for Islamists."
==============
On 3/30/11 11:00 PM, "E. Wayne Johnson 朱稳森" wrote:
>
> Bloody Bill Kristol Praises Obama as a Born-Again Neo-Con.
> (maybe Barry is just the same old con.)
>
> It’s not an endorsement Barack Obama probably expected — or wanted — but 
> Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol gave the president high marks for his 
> recent foreign policy gestures.
>
> In his “You’ve come a long way, baby” post 
> <http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/you-ve-come-long-way-baby_555622.html> 
> Monday night, Kristol praised Obama for his address to the American people 
> about the action he took against Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi. On 
> Wednesday’s “Red Eye” on the Fox News 
> <http://dailycaller.com/2011/03/30/bill-kristol-declares-obama-a-born-again-neo-con-days-after-consulting-with-him-on-libya-policy/#> 
> Channel, Kristol took things a step further and declared Obama “a born-again 
> neo-con.”
>
> Host Greg Gutfeld asked Kristol how he felt about Obama coming to him for help 
> (reportedly the president had met with him and others prior to his Monday 
> night address 
> <http://washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/beltway-confidential/2011/03/obama-makes-direct-libya-pitch-columnists>).
>
> “He didn’t come to me for help, of course 
> <http://dailycaller.com/2011/03/30/bill-kristol-declares-obama-a-born-again-neo-con-days-after-consulting-with-him-on-libya-policy/#>,” 
> Kristol said. “I’m not going to acknowledge that. He came to me to make sure I 
> was supporting his sound policies. Of course, since his sound policies are 
> more like the policies people like me have been advocating for quite a while, 
> I’m happy to support them. He’s a born-again neo-con.”
>
> Throughout 2007 and 2008 in the race for the Democratic presidential 
> nomination, Obama ran as the anti-war candidate. But Obama has taken on 
> different stripes with this gesture, Kristol joked.
>
> “What’s the joke – they told me if I voted for McCain 
> <http://dailycaller.com/2011/03/30/bill-kristol-declares-obama-a-born-again-neo-con-days-after-consulting-with-him-on-libya-policy/#>, 
> we’d be going to war in a third Muslim country?” Kristol said. “I voted for 
> McCain and we’re doing it.”
>
>
> Read more: 
> http://dailycaller.com/2011/03/30/bill-kristol-declares-obama-a-born-again-neo-con-days-after-consulting-with-him-on-libya-policy/#ixzz1I97fsvH9
>
>
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