Syria under Bashir Assad (closed end 2014)

[jmm99]

I only know what I read about the Islamic Front; so as to this:

Part of the President's desired goal for Syria regardless of the outcome was that minorities would be protected, those minorities are principally the Alawites, Christians, and moderate Sunnis. I'm not sure what the Islamic Front's objectives are post Assad, but I suspect they won't be anymore interested in protecting religious minorities than the Muslim Brotherhood were in Egypt.

my impression is that the Islamic Front would be more repression than extermination; depends how salafist-takfirist they are at heart. My guess will be worst than yours about their heart lines.

BTW, Debka speculation does consider Assad as one possibility of three:

The administration is examining three hard options:

1. The Islamic Front is backed, funded, armed and supplied with intelligence by Saudi Arabia. By beating the FSA, the Front has awarded Riyadh high Syrian points against Washington. However, the Obama administration is deeply committed to joint steps in Syria with Moscow and Tehran, the sequel to the six-power nuclear accord forged in Geneva last month, to which Saudi Arabia is flatly opposed. President Barack Obama would therefore prefer to ignore the Saudi success in Syria.

2. For the second option, Ambassador Ford was empowered all the same to offer the Islamist Front a seat at Geneva II, the conference on a political solution of the Syrian civil conflict taking place in Montreux on Jan. 22. American military and financial assistance would also be on tap. This would be a bitter pill for the Washington to swallow, since the Islamic Front is led by commanders who quit other militias in protest against US failure to deliver promised arms.

3. The third option would be to heed voices rising now in Washington to start talking to the Syrian ruler Bashar Assad and admit that the US and the West fell down badly in underestimating his durability and military edge in the course of the three-year civil war.

Ryan Crocker, former US ambassador to Baghdad and an eminent influence on US Middle East policy in the past decade, was the first prominent voice to advocate this course: “We need to start talking to the Assad regime again…,” he wrote in an article. “ It will have to be done very, very quietly. But bad as Assad is, he is not as bad as the jihadis who would take over in his absence.”

He was echoed by former CIA and NSA director Adm. Michael Hayden, who said: “The sectarian bloodbath in Syria is such a threat to regional security that a victory for Bashar al-Assad's regime could be the best outcome to hope for.”

Talking to the annual Jamestown Foundation conference of terror experts on Dec. 11, Hayden said that a rebel win was not one of the three possible outcomes he foresees for the conflict: "Option three is Assad wins. And I must tell you at the moment, as ugly as it sounds, I'm kind of trending toward option three as the best out of three very, very ugly possible outcomes."

To be honest, my advice to the USG comes from our old favorite poster:



In other words, quit digging the hole deeper.

Here's an anecdote about our Middle East policy that I learned from looking at the FDR-ibn Saud photo.



I wondered who the kneeling Marine was.

Turns out he was Bill Eddy, Marine-OSS, Arab linguist, FDR's envoy to ibn Saud and the interpreter at the meeting. Here's the story (Eddy had a major role before and after the meeting), Today in History – King Abdulaziz and President Roosevelt Meeting (Published: February 14, 2011). Eddy wrote a 1954 monograph, FDR Meets ibn Saud.

Colonel William A. Eddy, U. S. Marine Corps, Retired, is the only person alive who knows exactly what was said between F.D.R. and Ibn Saud, as he was sole interpreter throughout.

He was born in Sidon (Lebanon) in 1896, the son and grandson of Presbyterian missionaries who lived and died in Syria.

He received his Litt.B. from Princeton University, 1917; PhD., 1922.

Professor of English, American University at Cairo, 1923-28; Dartmouth College, 1928-1936.

President of Hobart and William Smith Colleges, 1936-1941.

U.S. Naval Attache, American Legation, Cairo, 1941.

Chief of OSS in North Africa, 1942-43.

First U.S. Minister Plenipotentiary of Saudi Arabia, 1944-1946.

Consultant to Arabian-American Oil Co., 1947-1952.

Consultant also to Trans-Arabian Pipe Line Co., since 1952.

Holder of Navy Cross, the Distinguished Service Cross, The Silver Star (2), the Purple Heart (2), The Legion of Merit. Wounded in battle of Belleau Woods, 1918.

Ibn Saud was convinced that FDR had promised, as a binding commitment on the US, that the Arabs would have a veto as to the Palestine-Jewish "question". But, FDR only lasted a few months more; and then came Harry Truman. As Eddy wrote:

MR. TRUMAN

The historic conference had an anticlimax at the White House which has never been reported.

The first week in October, 1945 [1946?], the Secretary of State recalled four chiefs of U. S. Missions simultaneously to have them testify as a group to Mr. Truman regarding the deterioration of American political interests in the Near East: the U.S. Ministers in Egypt, Lebanon and Syria (jointly), Saudi Arabia, and the Consul-General to mandated Palestine.

The four arrived for a White House appointment which had been scheduled for about October 10.

The four were kept idle in Washington four weeks, away from their posts and with no duties whatsoever, because the White House advisors, including David K. Niles, persuaded the President that it would be impolitic to see his Ministers to Arab countries, no matter how briefly, prior to the November ongressional elections.

After the elections, the Director of the Near East Office of the Department of State was allowed to bring the four in for a private conference with Mr. Truman. The spokesman for the group, George Wadsworth, presented orally an agreed statement in about twenty minutes. There was little discussion and the President asked few questions in the meeting whose Minutes have been carefully guarded in the Department of State.

Finally, Mr. Truman summed up his position with the utmost candor: “I’m sorry, gentlemen, but I have to answer to hundreds of thousands who are anxious for the success of Zionism; I do not have hundreds of thousands of Arabs among my constituents.”

And, so US policy has swung back and forth ever since, based on political expediency and the relative force of the two opposing lobbies.

Regards

Mike