Aziboy
Banned
Friends of Syria: Obama, Clinton, the Saudi King, All Pusillanimous, One Worse Than the Other
I know that this is harsh. But I use the word pusillanimous in its ugliest meaning—which is the “unmanly” meaning—especially in relation to Saudi Arabia, having stockpiled weapons and trained soldiers for decades so that by now it is the only Arab country capable of taking on the monstrous regime in Damascus … and winning. I say “unmanly” because the kingdom has done nothing of the sort. “For sure,” as the Arabs say in their English, it is wholly a man’s country, ugly and unnatural in any depiction of a crowd, actually camouflaged, and thus preposterous in its laws, mores, culture, and presentation of self. Of course, there are women in the country and they can do nothing for or by themselves, save if they are foreigners when servitude is their lot, like foreigners who are men. In fact, servitude is the only guarantor of gender equality in the kingdom.
Now, the military is a proud lot, mostly deriving from the fact that a Saudi royal (graduate of Sandhurst, Prince Khaled bin Sultan bin Abd Al Aziz, the nomenclature denoting him as a grandson of the founder of the kingdom, son of the late defense minister and one of thousands of princelings) was commander of the coalition of the so-so allies, including Syria (!), which freed Kuwait from Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in 1991. OK, maybe Norman Schwarzkopf was really commander of Desert Storm. But let’s not quibble. The monarchy also scurried to arms when, during the last year, no Arab force was completely excused from warfare, and the Saudis eagerly took up the cause of the minority Sunni rulers of Bahrain, one sheikh to another, against the vast majority of Shia who are their subjects. And, to be sure, our country patrols the Persian Gulf against what soon may be a very mischievous flotilla of Iranian soldiers and sailors, to say nothing of terrorists who roam the seas already.
Saudi Arabia took the initiative in the Arab League to demand and command that Bashar Al Assad cease the brutalization of the Sunni majority dispersed among the country’s pastiche of minorities. The League designated a certified brutalizer himself—the Sudanese architect of the Sudanese genocide—to bring calm, or such calm as one can imagine to a country that is nowhere near a nation state. Anyway, this seedy initiative increased the killing … and it is increasing still.
Saudi Arabia and the League have not given up, however. The ongoing official murders continue, and the rebels have also certainly not given up. Of course, there is more and more division in the ranks, in all the ranks. Truly ugly allies like Hamas, the premier Sunni organization among exiled Palestinians, which had been sheltered from Israel by Assad, walked out on their long-term savior. And in Haifa, Israeli-Arab citizens, perhaps 500 of them, demonstrated for Assad; nobody bothered them. So there is little clarity in the big Arab street running from Tunis to Baghdad via Beirut, where Hassan Nasrallah and Hezbollah, his armed mob, is still a force deeply allied with Assad. What you make of the lopsided dictator’s vote for his new Syrian constitution is what you make of it. But remember that Stalin won his elections to “beloved leader” with somewhere between 97 percent and 99 percent.
The evidence for the lingering animus, the intensifying animus for Assad of the other Arabs is still in the League. It has drafted Kofi Annan to be its interlocutor with the murderous brute. But the choice of Annan to negotiate the end of a bloodbath or work in some other manner to do so is, I am sorry to say, a grotesque joke. No man or woman in “progressive” officialdom, and surely no international civil servant, has a record of such aversion to evidence of deliberate butchery as this elegant African aristocrat, honored Park Avenue dinner guest par excellence, first in Rwanda where a million Tutsis were wiped out, next in Srebenica where the U.N. simply permitted thousands of Bosnian Muslims to be slaughtered by the military forces of Christian Serbia. (Allow me to intrude to say something personal: In retrospect, The New Republic was probably the most significant voice in persuading the Clinton administration to save the remaining Muslims from sure death at the hands of an army of the Cross. Look at our collection of essays, The Black Book of Bosnia,for heavy evidence of this proud claim.)
Annan is a man of dutiful patina but without a functioning conscience, and his shocking designation as the healer of the Syrian catastrophe will bring no good. Isn’t the whole Annan enterprise premised on a diplomatic (i.e., a negotiated) solution? This would leave the murderer in power. Which rebellious Syrians would countenance that?
As it happens, Annan has dealt with Assad before, actually as his intermittent interlocutor with Israel when—wouldn’t you know it?—as secretary general he was trying to persuade Jerusalem that Damascus is an honest partner for peace. Isn’t it tiresome by now, as the Arab world—to say nothing of the Muslim world—is at its most combustible in modern history, that missionaries and messengers are still trying to persuade the Jewish state to cede perilous principles and critical cartography to a reckless and fissured pair of political revolutions? Certainly no one can even assure the internal stability or the peacefulness of the Palestinians. So, in this regard, where is Salam Fayyad, the most recent great hope for comity in fractured Palestine?
I have it on excellent authority that it was Saudi Arabia which in desperation forced on the Arab League the retention of Annan. Someone more honest would be too exotic for its members to bear. But it is a fact that, for whatever reason, Riyadh had hoped that America would take the initiative on Syria, given especially that the French (who have historic ties in the country, having dethroned Faisal I from being king of Damascus and having the British crowning him king of Baghdad) had cleared up any insinuations that they might do to Assad what they did to Qaddafi. Well, the U.S. was not ready for this kind of leadership. And neither was the kingdom.
Which brings me back to the pusillanimity of the Saudis. Just the other day, the U.S. Department of Defense announced that it will sell to Riyadh 84 additional latest model Boeing F-16 jets and upgraded 70 F-15 jets. They are not yet in the Arabian Desert. But there are already so many aircraft, tanks, reconnaissance vehicles, and rocket launchers available and ready for work that one wonders why the monarch waits. Sixteen operation prepared military airfields etc. This equipment puts more than 200,000 full-time soldiers as a potential threat. Why shouldn’t they be a real threat to Syria? They could get to Damascus within hours, passing through Jordan, which the Assads have always despised. Anyway, King Abdullah could not refuse a request from Riyadh and he wouldn’t want to. But the Hashemites are not the obstacle. It is the al-Saud who are. And given the four decades of family tyranny and mass murder in Syria, the reluctance of the most powerful Arab state, the most powerful monarchy in the world, to take out these killers is what I said at the beginning: pusillanimity.
I’m afraid that President Obama is also pusillanimous on this matter. Now, this should not be surprising. The president is not touched, not touched at all by mass violations of human dignity. Moreover, he is not touched by mass takings of human life … anywhere. I dare my readers to challenge this dismal assertion. And the fact is that the world of American progressives, the world we used to call “liberal,” is also not stirred by the killing of Arabs by other Arabs. (Or, for that matter, the killing of Christians by Muslims. Or Muslims by Muslims. But let Israel kill an old Hamas chieftain, Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh, guilty of murdering dozens, and the international press goes haywire for months. Look this up anywhere.) God knows, I recall the pierced looks I got from friends in 1958 when I told them that my girlfriend and I had visited Franco Spain.
Now, Obama knows that he has to say something about Syria. And he has. He may also have done something … but nothing meaningful and surely nothing stunning. Yes, of course, he doesn’t like Assad, at least not now, after months and months of humiliating courtship. Here is his latest pronouncement: shabby, flabby, and inconclusive:
All of us seeing the terrible pictures coming out of Syria and Homs recently recognize that it is absolutely imperative for the international community to rally in sending a clear message to President Assad that it is time for a transition.
Terrible pictures, recently , absolutely imperative, international community, rally, clear message, time for a transition! These are the words of a trimmer. And trimming like this in these circumstances is also pusillanimous.
I know that this is harsh. But I use the word pusillanimous in its ugliest meaning—which is the “unmanly” meaning—especially in relation to Saudi Arabia, having stockpiled weapons and trained soldiers for decades so that by now it is the only Arab country capable of taking on the monstrous regime in Damascus … and winning. I say “unmanly” because the kingdom has done nothing of the sort. “For sure,” as the Arabs say in their English, it is wholly a man’s country, ugly and unnatural in any depiction of a crowd, actually camouflaged, and thus preposterous in its laws, mores, culture, and presentation of self. Of course, there are women in the country and they can do nothing for or by themselves, save if they are foreigners when servitude is their lot, like foreigners who are men. In fact, servitude is the only guarantor of gender equality in the kingdom.
Now, the military is a proud lot, mostly deriving from the fact that a Saudi royal (graduate of Sandhurst, Prince Khaled bin Sultan bin Abd Al Aziz, the nomenclature denoting him as a grandson of the founder of the kingdom, son of the late defense minister and one of thousands of princelings) was commander of the coalition of the so-so allies, including Syria (!), which freed Kuwait from Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in 1991. OK, maybe Norman Schwarzkopf was really commander of Desert Storm. But let’s not quibble. The monarchy also scurried to arms when, during the last year, no Arab force was completely excused from warfare, and the Saudis eagerly took up the cause of the minority Sunni rulers of Bahrain, one sheikh to another, against the vast majority of Shia who are their subjects. And, to be sure, our country patrols the Persian Gulf against what soon may be a very mischievous flotilla of Iranian soldiers and sailors, to say nothing of terrorists who roam the seas already.
Saudi Arabia took the initiative in the Arab League to demand and command that Bashar Al Assad cease the brutalization of the Sunni majority dispersed among the country’s pastiche of minorities. The League designated a certified brutalizer himself—the Sudanese architect of the Sudanese genocide—to bring calm, or such calm as one can imagine to a country that is nowhere near a nation state. Anyway, this seedy initiative increased the killing … and it is increasing still.
Saudi Arabia and the League have not given up, however. The ongoing official murders continue, and the rebels have also certainly not given up. Of course, there is more and more division in the ranks, in all the ranks. Truly ugly allies like Hamas, the premier Sunni organization among exiled Palestinians, which had been sheltered from Israel by Assad, walked out on their long-term savior. And in Haifa, Israeli-Arab citizens, perhaps 500 of them, demonstrated for Assad; nobody bothered them. So there is little clarity in the big Arab street running from Tunis to Baghdad via Beirut, where Hassan Nasrallah and Hezbollah, his armed mob, is still a force deeply allied with Assad. What you make of the lopsided dictator’s vote for his new Syrian constitution is what you make of it. But remember that Stalin won his elections to “beloved leader” with somewhere between 97 percent and 99 percent.
The evidence for the lingering animus, the intensifying animus for Assad of the other Arabs is still in the League. It has drafted Kofi Annan to be its interlocutor with the murderous brute. But the choice of Annan to negotiate the end of a bloodbath or work in some other manner to do so is, I am sorry to say, a grotesque joke. No man or woman in “progressive” officialdom, and surely no international civil servant, has a record of such aversion to evidence of deliberate butchery as this elegant African aristocrat, honored Park Avenue dinner guest par excellence, first in Rwanda where a million Tutsis were wiped out, next in Srebenica where the U.N. simply permitted thousands of Bosnian Muslims to be slaughtered by the military forces of Christian Serbia. (Allow me to intrude to say something personal: In retrospect, The New Republic was probably the most significant voice in persuading the Clinton administration to save the remaining Muslims from sure death at the hands of an army of the Cross. Look at our collection of essays, The Black Book of Bosnia,for heavy evidence of this proud claim.)
Annan is a man of dutiful patina but without a functioning conscience, and his shocking designation as the healer of the Syrian catastrophe will bring no good. Isn’t the whole Annan enterprise premised on a diplomatic (i.e., a negotiated) solution? This would leave the murderer in power. Which rebellious Syrians would countenance that?
As it happens, Annan has dealt with Assad before, actually as his intermittent interlocutor with Israel when—wouldn’t you know it?—as secretary general he was trying to persuade Jerusalem that Damascus is an honest partner for peace. Isn’t it tiresome by now, as the Arab world—to say nothing of the Muslim world—is at its most combustible in modern history, that missionaries and messengers are still trying to persuade the Jewish state to cede perilous principles and critical cartography to a reckless and fissured pair of political revolutions? Certainly no one can even assure the internal stability or the peacefulness of the Palestinians. So, in this regard, where is Salam Fayyad, the most recent great hope for comity in fractured Palestine?
I have it on excellent authority that it was Saudi Arabia which in desperation forced on the Arab League the retention of Annan. Someone more honest would be too exotic for its members to bear. But it is a fact that, for whatever reason, Riyadh had hoped that America would take the initiative on Syria, given especially that the French (who have historic ties in the country, having dethroned Faisal I from being king of Damascus and having the British crowning him king of Baghdad) had cleared up any insinuations that they might do to Assad what they did to Qaddafi. Well, the U.S. was not ready for this kind of leadership. And neither was the kingdom.
Which brings me back to the pusillanimity of the Saudis. Just the other day, the U.S. Department of Defense announced that it will sell to Riyadh 84 additional latest model Boeing F-16 jets and upgraded 70 F-15 jets. They are not yet in the Arabian Desert. But there are already so many aircraft, tanks, reconnaissance vehicles, and rocket launchers available and ready for work that one wonders why the monarch waits. Sixteen operation prepared military airfields etc. This equipment puts more than 200,000 full-time soldiers as a potential threat. Why shouldn’t they be a real threat to Syria? They could get to Damascus within hours, passing through Jordan, which the Assads have always despised. Anyway, King Abdullah could not refuse a request from Riyadh and he wouldn’t want to. But the Hashemites are not the obstacle. It is the al-Saud who are. And given the four decades of family tyranny and mass murder in Syria, the reluctance of the most powerful Arab state, the most powerful monarchy in the world, to take out these killers is what I said at the beginning: pusillanimity.
I’m afraid that President Obama is also pusillanimous on this matter. Now, this should not be surprising. The president is not touched, not touched at all by mass violations of human dignity. Moreover, he is not touched by mass takings of human life … anywhere. I dare my readers to challenge this dismal assertion. And the fact is that the world of American progressives, the world we used to call “liberal,” is also not stirred by the killing of Arabs by other Arabs. (Or, for that matter, the killing of Christians by Muslims. Or Muslims by Muslims. But let Israel kill an old Hamas chieftain, Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh, guilty of murdering dozens, and the international press goes haywire for months. Look this up anywhere.) God knows, I recall the pierced looks I got from friends in 1958 when I told them that my girlfriend and I had visited Franco Spain.
Now, Obama knows that he has to say something about Syria. And he has. He may also have done something … but nothing meaningful and surely nothing stunning. Yes, of course, he doesn’t like Assad, at least not now, after months and months of humiliating courtship. Here is his latest pronouncement: shabby, flabby, and inconclusive:
All of us seeing the terrible pictures coming out of Syria and Homs recently recognize that it is absolutely imperative for the international community to rally in sending a clear message to President Assad that it is time for a transition.
Terrible pictures, recently , absolutely imperative, international community, rally, clear message, time for a transition! These are the words of a trimmer. And trimming like this in these circumstances is also pusillanimous.