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Syria: the New Cuba

The Bush Administration, according to McClatchy Newspapers, “has launched a campaign to isolate and embarrass Syrian President Bashar Assad, using parliamentary elections in late April as a lever, according to State Department officials and Syrian exiles.”

The campaign, which some officials fear is aimed at destabilizing Syria, has been in the works for months.

It involves escalating attacks on Syria's human rights record, which is generally regarded as abysmal, as well as White House-approved support for Syrian bloggers and election monitors inside and outside the country to highlight the nation's lack of freedom, the officials and others said.

Syria is a brutal dictatorship and its upcoming election will be a sham. But what about America's darling in the Arab world–Egypt?

Egypt has received foreign assistance in staggering sums (it's the largest recipient aside from Israel) and was long the focus of U.S. hopes for a home-grown democracy. But President Mubarak seems to be opting for a model of dynastic succession. He's grooming his son to succeed him, which is the exact approach we have witnessed in Syria. Egypt has become steadily more authoritarian over time, frequently targeting just the sort of Western-oriented democracy advocates that the United States once hoped to see emerge in a new government. Consider, for example, this profile from National Review of a young Egyptian law student blogger just sentenced to four years imprisonment.

The Bush Administration has also lashed out at a Congressional delegation headed by Speaker Pelosi now off to meet the Syrian strongman. Said Dana Perino:

I’m not sure what the hopes are to—what she’s hoping to accomplish there. I know that Assad probably really wants people to come and have a photo opportunity and have tea with him, and have discussions about where they’re coming from, but we do think that’s a really bad idea.

Obviously, a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, because the White House seems to have no problems with a scheduled visit by Republican lawmakers to Syria.

The Kerik Connection

Former Secretary of Homeland Security-designate and Rudolph Giuliani partner Bernard Kerik faces indictment on multiple felony counts, again.

Is Afghanistan Lost?

The Vancouver Sun reports:

Two Afghanistan experts painted a sobering picture of the conditions there yesterday, arguing support among Afghans for NATO forces is plummeting, the U.S.-driven policy of poppy eradication is wrongheaded, and the war might not be winnable in its present form.

U.S. scholar Barnett Rubin and Gordon Smith, Canada's former ambassador to NATO, delivered their withering comments to a Commons committee only days after Canada's top military commander, Gen. Rick Hillier, touted progress being made there.

Both saw popular support of the Kabul government eroding, but anger seems particularly focused at the West, which is seen as having failed to come through on promises to stabilize and rebuild the country.

Still, while very few see a salvageable position in Iraq, the situation in Afghanistan is different.

Disloyal Bushie

Matthew Dowd was a leading figure in the Bush-Cheney election efforts of 2000 and 2004. He has just given a wide-ranging interview in which he declares that Bush is not the man he thought he was:

[Dowd] said he believed the president had not moved aggressively enough to hold anyone accountable for the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, and that Mr. Bush still approached governing with a “my way or the highway” mentality reinforced by a shrinking circle of trusted aides . . .

In speaking out, Mr. Dowd became the first member of Mr. Bush’s inner circle to break so publicly with him.

He said his decision to step forward had not come easily. But, he said, his disappointment in Mr. Bush’s presidency is so great that he feels a sense of duty to go public given his role in helping Mr. Bush gain and keep power.

Dowd also expresses a lack of confidence in Bush's leadership as the “war president;” He apparently prepared an op-ed entitled “Kerry was right,” then held off publishing it. The op-ed would have supported Senator Kerry's stance on withdrawal from Iraq.

The Other Hostages

The Asia Times notes that:

As the Western media focus on the fate of 15 Britons detained for allegedly trespassing into Iranian waters, the status of five Iranian officials captured in a U.S. military raid on a liaison office in northern Iraq on January 11 remains a mystery. Even though high-level Iraqi officials have publicly called for their release, for all practical purposes, the Iranians have disappeared into the U.S.-sanctioned “coalition detention” system that has been criticized as arbitrary and even illegal.

The seizure of the 15 Britons by the Revolutionary Guard was certainly an act of provocation. But there was a predicate: the seizure by U.S. forces in Iraq of five Iranian representatives in Arbil. This was an equally provocative act by the Americans, designed to send a signal to the Iraqi Government of U.S. disapproval of their secret dealings with the Iranians. As I said to the Asia Times, U.S. forces claim that their seizure of the Iranian quasi-diplomats was grounded in U.N. Security Council Resolution 1546—but that suggestion does not hold water.

The resolution does grant a right to Multinational Forces in Iraq to hold persons believed a security risk, but it expressly makes that subject to the Constitution and laws of Iraq, which in turn require detainees to be brought before an Iraqi magistrate within a fortnight to justify the detention. The United States has not done this. The U.S. seizure and holding of the Iranians is no less unlawful than the Iranian seizure of the 15 Britons. One reasonable basis for resolution of the current crisis would be an exchange of the hostages held by each side.