Waltz with Bashar: Deconstructing the "Constructive" in US-Syria Talks
Dr. Joseph Hitti
March 07, 2009
Waltz with Bashar: Deconstructing the "Constructive" in US Talks with Syria
The big news today is that the US has had "constructive" talks with the Syrian dictator over the past couple of days, and for some reason every report on the news religiously keeps the word "constructive" between quotation marks. That this is an Obamaesque departure from Bush´s "They know what we want, so there´s no point in talking" is beyond debate, and the UK´s Gordon Brown has even announced he will talk with Syria´s terrorist Hezbollah poodles in Lebanon, provided Hezbollah opens a "good" political subsidiary and keeps the "bad" military mother organization in the closet. For example, US envoys Jeffrey Feltman and Daniel Shapiro who, despite their Jewish identity which would qualifying them in Syrian double-speak as members of the US "Zionist lobby", were received in Damascus yesterday and stated, among other nonsensical diplomatic language, that they "found a lot of common ground" with Syrian officials. A breakthrough? Far from it.
Yet, the reason perhaps for this caution in using language about the Syrian Baathist regime is that the past 40 years have been particularly rife with double-speak and ambiguous language when talking about the Syrian dictatorship´s positions and actions. Here is a laundry list, not by any means exhaustive, to describe the record of that "relationship" between the West and Syria.
Syria "cooperated" with the US in the war on terrorism.
Syria has maintained "quiet" for 35 years on its border with the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights; Syria never "resisted" the Israeli enemy´s occupation and annexation of that territory.
Syria "cooperated" with the international community on the Hariri assassination investigation
Between 1973 and 2003, the Syrian invasion and intervention in Lebanon (with all the genocidal and nation-destruction attributes that it had vis-à-vis Lebanon) was deemed a "factor of stability" by the West, both right-wing and left-wing governments alike.
For some mysterious reasons, Syria was always granted a "right" in Lebanon to protect its "weak Lebanese flank" against some hypothetical Israeli threat that never materialized. The only thing that materialized for the Lebanese was a long and brutal Syrian occupation that left very deep scars in Lebanon.
Unlike their peers (Kim Jong-il or Saddam Hussein and others), the Syrian despots Hafez and Bashar Assad, were always deemed positively "cunning" and "trustworthy", and were praised for "keeping their word" in the numerous shady deals that the US and its European poodles made with the regime in Damascus.
Syria played a "constructive" role during the Western hostage crisis in Lebanon – when Hezbollah, at the behest of Syria and armed by it, kidnapped and held for years British, US, French, Irish, Indian, German, Italian etc...hostages, some of whom it killed. Syria, like an arsonist-fireman, would prompt the kidnappings, then leverage the advantage by "cooperating" and "securing" the release of the hostages, thus earning good marks with the credulous and naïve West.
In all the assassinations, bombings and plane hijackings in which thousands of Westerners and Lebanese died in Lebanon during the war of 1973 – 2004, Syria would be the first to be suspected and accused, only to see the West quickly "engage" Syria in "constructive" talks as we see today.
Keep in mind that this rapprochement by the West with Syria and with Hezbollah (since the UK announced earlier this week that it will talk to Hezbollah) is happening at exactly the SAME MOMENT that Syria stands to be named as the main suspect in the Hariri assassination. The International Tribunal set up for that purpose began its work officially this past week, and the charges and indictments against high-ranking Syrian officials and their Lebanese collaborators are to be imminently announced.
Such "cooperation" and "constructive" engagement between the West and Syria has happened so many times in the past at crucial moments like this, only to see Syria temporarily defuse the pressure with this engagement, and turn around a few weeks later and raise the stakes again with acts of terror and such. Either the West does not learn from its past mistakes, or Syria holds such a big price to offer the West that the US and its European poodles are willing to entertain this cry wolf game for 4 decades with no result. That price is a potential final closure of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, since Syria holds the last remaining "rejectionist" cards to a final settlement in the form of Hamas and Hezbollah and the like. Nothing else has stood in the way of a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, other than Syria´s fostering of a rejectionist platform and its incubation of hordes of terror groups, both in Syria and in occupied Lebanon, that scuttled time after time every effort at moving forward.
We (i.e. the Lebanese) would love to see such a resolution because it would finally shield Lebanon from the disastrous repercussions that conflict has had on it. We would love to see Syria capsize into the peace camp like Libya did, because that would eliminate the Big Terror next door that has maimed Lebanon forever. But we are not dumb. We have seen this "Waltz with Bashar" go on for 4 decades, while we were paying the price for its constant failure. But US and French envoys today keep repeating to the disbelievers among the Lebanese that this time "a deal with Syria won´t happen at Lebanon´s expense". I then wonder, at whose expense? What price is Syria demanding to deal? Or is the West promising the dictator in Damascus to get him personally off the hook in the upcoming Hariri assassination indictments as long as he agrees to scapegoat a couple of his high-ranking Baathist henchmen to make the whole charade look good, in exchange for his cooperation on the Golan and peace with Israel.
Well, we the Lebanese people, couldn´t care less in fact about the Hariri assassination (despite what the dogs of the Lebanese media, who merely echo their political masters, keep barking) because Hariri was a former Syrian collaborator who turned against his masters and so they killed him. Big deal. At some level, we are glad that he perished because first, he deserved it, and second, he sold Lebanon to Syria and made billions in the process.
But what we the Lebanese people expect the West to demand from Syria:
Formally recognize Lebanon as a distinct national entity from Syria: Dispatch the ambassador to Beirut, stop smuggling weapons and terrorists to Lebanon, stop supplying Hezbollah with weapons and money, change the history texts used in Syria to brainwash Syria´s people about the charade that Lebanon is a renegade province of a mythical Greater Syria , etc.
Eliminate all language of "distinct" relations", "brotherly countries", "Shared destiny of fate and path", "One people in two states", and all the Fascist primitive inanities of the Baath party and other Arab nationalist idiocies, when discussing Lebanese-Syrian relations.
Formally submit all the necessary documentation to the UN in which Syria officially relinquishes once and forever any rights to the Shebaa Farms in South Lebanon, thus paving the way for a final delineation of the border between Syria and Lebanon, and effectively shutting down the Hezbollah terrorist enterprise and drying up the "resistance" diarrhea that keeps oozing out of Hassan Nasarallah´s hairy oral orifice.
To immediately and unconditionally enter into negotiations with Israel to reach a peace agreement between the two states.
What else is there to talk about with Syria? In retrospect, George Bush was right. The international community has for 40 years "waltzed with the Assads" on and off, shunning then engaging them. Yet, the tenor and substance of the talks has not changed. So why would they be "constructive" this time? I was about to write, "only time will tell", but that would be false because time has so far told us that Syria has done nothing but destructive things in the Middle East for the past 40 years, no matter how often anyone talked with the Syrian dictators or boycotted them.
The big news today is that the US has had "constructive" talks with the Syrian dictator over the past couple of days, and for some reason every report on the news religiously keeps the word "constructive" between quotation marks. That this is an Obamaesque departure from Bush´s "They know what we want, so there´s no point in talking" is beyond debate, and the UK´s Gordon Brown has even announced he will talk with Syria´s terrorist Hezbollah poodles in Lebanon, provided Hezbollah opens a "good" political subsidiary and keeps the "bad" military mother organization in the closet. For example, US envoys Jeffrey Feltman and Daniel Shapiro who, despite their Jewish identity which would qualifying them in Syrian double-speak as members of the US "Zionist lobby", were received in Damascus yesterday and stated, among other nonsensical diplomatic language, that they "found a lot of common ground" with Syrian officials. A breakthrough? Far from it.
Yet, the reason perhaps for this caution in using language about the Syrian Baathist regime is that the past 40 years have been particularly rife with double-speak and ambiguous language when talking about the Syrian dictatorship´s positions and actions. Here is a laundry list, not by any means exhaustive, to describe the record of that "relationship" between the West and Syria.
Syria "cooperated" with the US in the war on terrorism.
Syria has maintained "quiet" for 35 years on its border with the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights; Syria never "resisted" the Israeli enemy´s occupation and annexation of that territory.
Syria "cooperated" with the international community on the Hariri assassination investigation
Between 1973 and 2003, the Syrian invasion and intervention in Lebanon (with all the genocidal and nation-destruction attributes that it had vis-à-vis Lebanon) was deemed a "factor of stability" by the West, both right-wing and left-wing governments alike.
For some mysterious reasons, Syria was always granted a "right" in Lebanon to protect its "weak Lebanese flank" against some hypothetical Israeli threat that never materialized. The only thing that materialized for the Lebanese was a long and brutal Syrian occupation that left very deep scars in Lebanon.
Unlike their peers (Kim Jong-il or Saddam Hussein and others), the Syrian despots Hafez and Bashar Assad, were always deemed positively "cunning" and "trustworthy", and were praised for "keeping their word" in the numerous shady deals that the US and its European poodles made with the regime in Damascus.
Syria played a "constructive" role during the Western hostage crisis in Lebanon – when Hezbollah, at the behest of Syria and armed by it, kidnapped and held for years British, US, French, Irish, Indian, German, Italian etc...hostages, some of whom it killed. Syria, like an arsonist-fireman, would prompt the kidnappings, then leverage the advantage by "cooperating" and "securing" the release of the hostages, thus earning good marks with the credulous and naïve West.
In all the assassinations, bombings and plane hijackings in which thousands of Westerners and Lebanese died in Lebanon during the war of 1973 – 2004, Syria would be the first to be suspected and accused, only to see the West quickly "engage" Syria in "constructive" talks as we see today.
Keep in mind that this rapprochement by the West with Syria and with Hezbollah (since the UK announced earlier this week that it will talk to Hezbollah) is happening at exactly the SAME MOMENT that Syria stands to be named as the main suspect in the Hariri assassination. The International Tribunal set up for that purpose began its work officially this past week, and the charges and indictments against high-ranking Syrian officials and their Lebanese collaborators are to be imminently announced.
Such "cooperation" and "constructive" engagement between the West and Syria has happened so many times in the past at crucial moments like this, only to see Syria temporarily defuse the pressure with this engagement, and turn around a few weeks later and raise the stakes again with acts of terror and such. Either the West does not learn from its past mistakes, or Syria holds such a big price to offer the West that the US and its European poodles are willing to entertain this cry wolf game for 4 decades with no result. That price is a potential final closure of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, since Syria holds the last remaining "rejectionist" cards to a final settlement in the form of Hamas and Hezbollah and the like. Nothing else has stood in the way of a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, other than Syria´s fostering of a rejectionist platform and its incubation of hordes of terror groups, both in Syria and in occupied Lebanon, that scuttled time after time every effort at moving forward.
We (i.e. the Lebanese) would love to see such a resolution because it would finally shield Lebanon from the disastrous repercussions that conflict has had on it. We would love to see Syria capsize into the peace camp like Libya did, because that would eliminate the Big Terror next door that has maimed Lebanon forever. But we are not dumb. We have seen this "Waltz with Bashar" go on for 4 decades, while we were paying the price for its constant failure. But US and French envoys today keep repeating to the disbelievers among the Lebanese that this time "a deal with Syria won´t happen at Lebanon´s expense". I then wonder, at whose expense? What price is Syria demanding to deal? Or is the West promising the dictator in Damascus to get him personally off the hook in the upcoming Hariri assassination indictments as long as he agrees to scapegoat a couple of his high-ranking Baathist henchmen to make the whole charade look good, in exchange for his cooperation on the Golan and peace with Israel.
Well, we the Lebanese people, couldn´t care less in fact about the Hariri assassination (despite what the dogs of the Lebanese media, who merely echo their political masters, keep barking) because Hariri was a former Syrian collaborator who turned against his masters and so they killed him. Big deal. At some level, we are glad that he perished because first, he deserved it, and second, he sold Lebanon to Syria and made billions in the process.
But what we the Lebanese people expect the West to demand from Syria:
Formally recognize Lebanon as a distinct national entity from Syria: Dispatch the ambassador to Beirut, stop smuggling weapons and terrorists to Lebanon, stop supplying Hezbollah with weapons and money, change the history texts used in Syria to brainwash Syria´s people about the charade that Lebanon is a renegade province of a mythical Greater Syria , etc.
Eliminate all language of "distinct" relations", "brotherly countries", "Shared destiny of fate and path", "One people in two states", and all the Fascist primitive inanities of the Baath party and other Arab nationalist idiocies, when discussing Lebanese-Syrian relations.
Formally submit all the necessary documentation to the UN in which Syria officially relinquishes once and forever any rights to the Shebaa Farms in South Lebanon, thus paving the way for a final delineation of the border between Syria and Lebanon, and effectively shutting down the Hezbollah terrorist enterprise and drying up the "resistance" diarrhea that keeps oozing out of Hassan Nasarallah´s hairy oral orifice.
To immediately and unconditionally enter into negotiations with Israel to reach a peace agreement between the two states.
What else is there to talk about with Syria? In retrospect, George Bush was right. The international community has for 40 years "waltzed with the Assads" on and off, shunning then engaging them. Yet, the tenor and substance of the talks has not changed. So why would they be "constructive" this time? I was about to write, "only time will tell", but that would be false because time has so far told us that Syria has done nothing but destructive things in the Middle East for the past 40 years, no matter how often anyone talked with the Syrian dictators or boycotted them.
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