Senator John Kerry goes out of his way to
make excuses for Bashar al-Assad (AFP photo)
Tony Badran
NOW Lebanon
09 March '10
Posted before Shabbat
In the past week, a new element was introduced into the unfolding and cacophonous saga of the Obama administration’s new Syria policy, namely the appearance of Senator John Kerry.
During a trip to the Middle East, Kerry spoke by telephone with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and later commented on the recent Damascus summit between Assad and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, at which the United States, and specifically Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, was openly ridiculed. Kerry went out of his way to make excuses for Assad, downplayed the significance of the summit, and blamed Syria’s alliance with Iran on the Bush administration.
Kerry’s actions beg the question: Who exactly, if anyone, is taking the lead on Washington’s Middle East policy and defining its parameters and objectives? The absence of a clear answer only reflects, at a practical level, the incoherence that exists at the conceptual level in American strategy. The danger is that Syria will play multiple US interlocutors off against one another while cultivating more sympathetic advocates, in that way shaping the Obama administration’s engagement process to its advantage.
(Read full article)
.
Tony Badran
NOW Lebanon
09 March '10
Posted before Shabbat
In the past week, a new element was introduced into the unfolding and cacophonous saga of the Obama administration’s new Syria policy, namely the appearance of Senator John Kerry.
During a trip to the Middle East, Kerry spoke by telephone with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and later commented on the recent Damascus summit between Assad and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, at which the United States, and specifically Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, was openly ridiculed. Kerry went out of his way to make excuses for Assad, downplayed the significance of the summit, and blamed Syria’s alliance with Iran on the Bush administration.
Kerry’s actions beg the question: Who exactly, if anyone, is taking the lead on Washington’s Middle East policy and defining its parameters and objectives? The absence of a clear answer only reflects, at a practical level, the incoherence that exists at the conceptual level in American strategy. The danger is that Syria will play multiple US interlocutors off against one another while cultivating more sympathetic advocates, in that way shaping the Obama administration’s engagement process to its advantage.
(Read full article)
.
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