On Thursday, Senators Chuck Hagel and John Kerry teamed up on a Wall St. Journal op-ed titled “It’s Time to Talk to Syria.” It’s a bizarre piece; they claim that “history shows that intensive diplomacy can pay off,” yet offer not a single plausible example to justify the claim. Their one anecdote — that Syria sided with the U.S.-led coalition in Desert Storm because James Baker visited Damascus so many times in the run-up to the war — is, to put it nicely, a cynical rewriting of history.
Why did Syria join the Desert Storm coalition? Because Hafez Assad had just lost his Soviet patron. As Daniel Pipes, who wrote a book about Syria’s switch from the Soviet to the American camp, pointed out:
Assad’s stand against Saddam Hussein won him an infusion of funds, new Arab friends, and an enhanced regional stature. It allowed him, in a single and stunningly deft maneuver, to switch from the anti-American to the pro-American camp … For Assad, the Iraqi invasion was a providential event, easing several of his worst dilemmas and rescuing him from the cul de sac of Soviet clientship.
The litany of ensuing diplomatic debacles with Syria, from the Madrid peace conference in 1991 to the Shepherdstown negotiations in 2000, is of course never mentioned. And these were “intensive” talks to be sure, which Hagel and Kerry insist is the prerequisite for success with Syria.
But one should be long past expecting the engagement fetishists to properly construe recent history. What is truly troubling about their op-ed — something that seems to have completely escaped notice — is that they appear to be advocating a U.S. apostasy on the Hariri tribunal:
The U.N. tribunal investigating the murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, which may soon issue indictments, is also creating pressure on the regime. If government officials are implicated, Syria could face increased international sanctions. The tribunal’s pursuit of justice must never be a bargaining chip, but it adds an incentive to improve relations that we should capitalize on.
The concluding sentence is so poorly written that it’s difficult to discern what the authors are trying to convey. But they appear to be arguing that the Hariri tribunal, which almost certainly will implicate high-level members of the Syrian regime in the massive Beirut car bombing that murdered Rafiq Hariri, would create a pretext for sanctioning the Assad regime; and that the threat of such sanctions would provide the United States an opportunity to come to Assad’s rescue with diplomatic engagement.
In other words, murdering Lebanese politicians will win the Assad regime the prospect of “improved relations” with the U.S. — at least in Kerry/Hagel-land. Which is very close to Obama-land.
