The chorus for re-legitimating Assad continues to grow bigger and louder, with two more experts joining the fray through an op-ed in the New York Times that appeared today. The two experts, Julien Barnes-Dacey, a policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, and Daniel Levy, the director of the council’s Middle East program, argue that:
Some of those who defend Obama’s policy in Syria and the Middle East claim that he actually knows what he is doing, and that by referring from overt intervention he is allowing various enemies of the United States to fight on Syrian and Iraqi territories, which serves America’s interests, or so they assert. But the things to which these “experts” seem to be oblivious here is the impact of the alleged policy on the Syrian and Iraqi peoples.
I have visited this theme before, and I will probably do it again, because the hypocrisy and/or ignorance involved here is simply unforgiveable, and because I need to stake out my position more clearly on the matter.
Continue reading “Prodemocracy Activists & the Global System”
Comment is free | theguardian.com.
This column was ranked one of the five best columns for Monday August 25 by thewire.com.
It’s time for him to do the right thing by arming moderate rebels, imposing a no-fly zone and expanding military action beyond Iraq
Barack Obama is embarking on a global course correction, if not an outright reversal: the policy of “don’t do stupid stuff” – the non-interventionism so praised by the Farid Zakarias and Tom Friedmans of the world – is getting forced out, albeit in the typical Obama fashion of admitting nothing and never going fast or far enough.
Continue reading “Obama has ignored Syria for too long: it’s the rise of Isis, stupid – now help”
The Ammar Abdulhamid Archive 