Thursday, August 9, 2012

Nicholas Kristof, "Obama AWOL in Syria": Boundless Imbecility

Nicholas Kristof is an imbecile who should not be writing about foreign policy.

In his latest New York Times op-ed entitled "Obama AWOL in Syria" (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/09/opinion/kristof-obama-awol-in-syria.html), Nicolas asks Obama to become more proactive with respect to the rebellion in Syria and suggests:

"What can we do? One step would be for the United States to move naval forces off the Syrian coast, while Turkey and Israel moved more troops close to their borders with Syria. This would pin down Syrian troops so that Assad would have fewer forces available to murder his people."

Excuse me, did I read this correctly? Israel should mass troops on the Syrian border? This would be a present from heaven (or perhaps in the case of Assad, from hell), which would allow him to unify all of Syria, including the rebels, and the rest of the Muslim Middle East in a war against Israel. Assad couldn't ask for more.

The US should move naval forces off the Syrian coast? And what about the Russian navy that docks at the Syrian port of Tartus? Should the US go head to head with Russia, never once mentioned by Kristof in his opinion piece?

Sorry, Nicholas, but as I have long observed, upon becoming president, Obama went AWOL in Syria by sending Senator John Kerry to curry favor with Assad, notwithstanding flagrant human rights abuses and abominations perpetrated by this loathsome tyrant. Furthermore, the refusal of Obama and Hillary Clinton to acknowledge these abuses, even when Assad began to gun down protesters in the streets, will forever be a stain on their records.

What should the US be doing? As I noted in the past, the US has a strategic interest here in undermining Iran and Hezbollah, and it also needs to keep an eye on Syrian stockpiles of chemical weapons. But the US also must avoid being sucked into a quagmire, where the involvement of an outside non-Muslim entity could provoke unforeseen consequences. In short, let Turkey and Saudi Arabia provide the military assistance to the rebels.

In addition to vociferously demanding in all international forums that Assad immediately step down, the US should seek to help the 276,000 Syrian refugees, who have crossed into Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon. Iran will have a hard time denigrating such a gesture of American goodwill.

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