THE CHRISTIANS OF LEBANON

STAND WITH
THE

SYRIAN REVOLUTION

AGAINST THE CRIMINAL ASSAD REGIME

PEOPLE OF SYRIA, GO FORWARD

YOUR PERSISTANCE & COURAGE

WILL WIN AGAINST TYRANNY
AT THE END

WHO KNOWS SYRIA  KNOWS

SYRIA HAS NOT RISEN YET

Beyond Qaddafi:
OurMiddle East Mission Is Not Over Yet

By Col. Cedric Leighton U.S.A.F. (retired)

As jubilant crowds gather in Tripoli and Benghazi to celebrate the demise of Qaddafi's regime and voters cast their ballots in neighboring Tunisia 's first truly free elections, it is tempting to believe that the West's job in the Middle East is done. You would certainly get that impression listening to President Obama's announcement on Friday that the US was withdrawing all its troops from Iraq. Unfortunately, nothing could be further from the truth.

While the events in Libya and Tunisia are truly momentous, they are just the beginning of a long journey for the Middle East. What course that journey will take is anyone's guess, but the US and Europe have an obligation to help keep this region on a democratic course. Judging by Friday's announcement, we may not even attempt to fulfill that obligation.

In announcing the withdrawal from Iraq, President Obama talked about re-focusing our energies on re-building our nation at home. But there can be no re-building here if there is no peace and no opportunity there. In fact, the lack of opportunity for Arab youth is a main recruiting tool for al Qaeda and similar organizations. Middle East policy must go beyond simply fulfilling campaign promises. The world is more complicated than any president's domestic agenda and it certainly will not wait for us to catch up if we decide to pursue an isolationist course.

Just like nature, geopolitics abhors a vacuum. The withdrawal of American troops from both Iraq and Afghanistan has the potential to create such a geopolitical vacuum and the nation that will seek to fill it is Iran. Iran fancies itself a regional power and is actively trying to diminish US influence not only in the Middle East, but around the world. The Islamic Republic is bent on achieving a nuclear weapons capability and has been doing so at least since the late 1990s, no matter what the now discredited 2007 National Intelligence Estimate stated. At the very least, Iran must be contained and one way to do so is to go after its allies one-by-one. We already helped the Libyan people get rid of the Iran-friendly Qaddafi. Now, we must do the same to help the Syrian people depose Bashar al-Assad.

Neither the NATO Alliance nor the US have much of an appetite to effect direct change in Syria, but that is precisely where their next efforts are needed. These do not necessarily have to involve the actual use of military force, but they need to be backed up by a credible threat to use such force if we aim to get results. The quicker NATO and the US act, the better our chances of effecting another successful regime change in the Arab World will be.

As an Iranian ally, Syria helps Iran support Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and their never-ending war with Israel. Since 1976, Syria has treated its neighbor Lebanon like a vassal state, upending a delicate sectarian balance and killing many of that nation's top political leaders.

Of greater importance geopolitically was Syria 's effort to acquire nuclear weapons, reportedly with North Korean technical help and at least $1 billion in Iranian funds. While the Israelis destroyed a plutonium reactor in a daring raid on the facility at Deir ez-Zor in 2007, there is evidence that other weapons of mass destruction may still be housed on Syrian soil.

Then, there's the question of human rights. Following in the footsteps of his father Hafez al Assad, who massacred at least 10,000 of his own people in the city of Hama in 1982, Bashar al-Assad's regime is responsible for the deaths of over 3,000 of its citizens. That total includes young children like Hamzah al-Khatib, a 13-year-old Syrian boy whose death at the hands of Syrian secret police sparked international outrage back in May. Despite international outrage, the Syrian government continues the practice of imprisoning and torturing countless political prisoners as part of its campaign to silence all opposition.

That opposition is being forced even further underground by the West's failure to focus on Syria 's plight. There is a legitimate fear that whatever regime comes after Assad will be even more of a virulent "bad actor" than the current regime is. Many Israelis would rather deal with the "devil they know", in the form of Assad, than with an unknown populist Syrian entity. Some Western governments appear to share this view as well, but such thinking may unnecessarily limit future geopolitical options.

Regimes like Assad's will fall one day due to their internal contradictions and their unsustainable culture of corruption. While we can never know when regimes like this will crumble, we can help to hasten their inevitable demise. It is better to find, mold and support the forces in Syria that seek to institute the rule of law and advocate for human rights. We must use our influence with such groups to steer them away from rogue nations like Iran and into the community of civilized nations.

We would have a better chance of influencing events in Syria had we not precipitously announced the withdrawal of all US troops from neighboring Iraq by the end of 2012. The current Syrian regime, an on-again, off-again partner of Saddam Hussein's, was genuinely shocked by the presence of US troops on its eastern border. The very fact that we were there helped to tame their behavior somewhat and it served to remind both Syria and Iran that we were willing to defend our interests in the region. Now that the US troop withdrawal has been announced, it becomes much more difficult for us to influence the behaviors of both nations. That's why it is now imperative that we help the Syrian people to overthrow the Assad regime. If that regime finds itself on the ash heap of history and Syria 's new government turns away from Tehran, then we would have achieved a major strategic victory. We would also be in a much safer geostrategic position from which to withdraw our troops from Iraq.

To make our desire for a new Syria a reality, we have to remember that nations, like people, respond to incentives. If we punish behavior that is antithetical to our interests with sanctions and other punitive measures and reward behavior that is congruent with our interests with political and economic incentives, we can shape how nations behave internationally and domestically. The key is to be consistent in our application of both punishments and rewards and to not be afraid to use our leverage with nations and political groups when we need to.

The Arab Spring has provided US policymakers with a set of golden opportunities to help make the Arab World a better place for its people. The time has come to think boldly of a brand new course that will help the Arab World extract itself from the malaise it has found itself in since the end of the Second World War. After the fall of Qaddafi, we should seize the momentum the West has won and help the Syrian people topple the Assad regime. A genuine Syrian Revolution would blow the winds of change to Tehran and help re-kindle the fires of freedom we so carelessly extinguished in 2009.

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Cedric Leighton is a United States Air Force Colonel (USAF, retired) and was a Deputy Director at the National Security Agency in 2010. Leighton was deployed five times to the Middle East and assigned to the United States Special Operations Command. Col. Leighton led a Tactical Integration Team that was credited with enabling the destruction of 95 percent of Saddam Hussein’s air defense system. He’s also decorated serviceman, having received the Defense Superior Service Medal, the Bronze Star for his work in Operation Iraqi Freedom and numerous other military awards.  Leighton appears regularly in the news media discussing military intelligence issues and foreign policy strategy on CNN, MSNBC, Fox Business News, CNBC, and is a regular contributor to Washington D.C.’s Capital Insider.

ONE PIPE LEADS TO ANOTHER

NEXT?

But What About Syria?

The Huffington Post

The Libya effect is causing ripples in some of the other Middle East countries where the cry for freedom has gone on for months. Syria is a case in mind, and the message can't be clearer. The unceremonial end of Muanmmar Gaddafi gave a much-needed boost to millions of Syrians, who are fantasizing of the day when their dictator will be just a bad memory. This is going to happen, but not in a matter of weeks or even a few months.

Still, the trend is clear, and the Alawite regime is increasingly isolated and consequently desperate. The killing machine of the Fourth Division and the Presidential Guard under Maher Assad and Assaf Shawkat is working extra time, as the uprising is moving to a new stage. That of an armed confrontation between them and large parts of their former comrades in arms, mainly Sunni soldiers and officers who defect in droves and turn on their former Alawite masters.

As this is happening, the mass demonstrations continue and the geographic scope of them is also expanding. In the last few weeks the second largest city in Syria, Aleppo, which was relatively muted, is in the uprising and the reaction of the regime is typical: killing as many protestors as possible. The estimate of 3000 victims in Syria  may seem to be much lower than the real number. Aleppo in the uprising is of significance because it has a large business community, composed of Sunnis as well as Christians and other minorities which until now seemed to give the regime the benefit of the doubt, believing that it could survive and restore stability. The relentless violence and its disastrous economic impact may finally turned the disc also for this element of the population. Altogether the uprising is likely to stay and intensify.

This is a battle of will between the Sunni majority and the determined Alawite elite, but one in which material resources and physical power could still prove to be the decisive factor. This is exactly where Vice President Biden's comments on the successful Libyan campaign can be very relevant regarding the predicament of the Syrian people.

Biden hailed the success in Libya, claiming that no American lives were lost. It was relatively cheap costing only $2 billion. While the VP sounded as if it was a model of action to be adopted also in other crisis spots, the case of Syria may be different than that of Libya. I, for one, do not detect any appetite in the US  or among its European allies to intervene militarily in Syria, either by creating a no-fly zone, sending ground troops or attacking from the sea.

It is also the case that, unlike the Libyan rebels, their Syrian counterparts are yet to appeal to the international community and ask for military intervention. They may do it in the future, but already now they are eager to have much more support from the US  and the Europeans than what actually comes their way. Let's take the financial element of Biden's statement. One shoulder Fim-92 Stinger missile costs only $38,000. The Syrian defectors organized in The Free Syria Army and other units will be happy to get as many stringers as possible. The Syrian air force, totally dominated by Alawites, has already been used against the defectors as well as civilians. The cost of even hundreds of Stingers given to the rebels will be far short of the money spent in Libya. Delivery could be along the Turkish-Syrian border. Just imagine the psychological effect of even one Syrian aircraft brought down by the rebels.

This is just one example, and there are others. Money should be promised and given to high-level Syrian officers crossing to one of the neighboring countries. And alongside this, there is much room for increased diplomatic support to the rebels and their political front, The Syrian National Council. The Obama Administration reiterated its position that the Assad regime lost its legitimacy. What, in that case, stops the administration from inviting representatives of the Council for formal talks with the Secretary of State and the President as a preliminary step before granting them formal recognition as the legitimate government of Syria ?

If such an invitation will come, and it is already now long overdue, the Syrian rebels will feel the pressure of the need to patch up their internal dissent, in order to present a credible and united position to the Americans and Europeans. The West for its part will have to accept that any respectable delegation of the Syrian opposition should include also the Muslim Brotherhood.

The massacre in Syria  has gone on for too long. It has to stop, and the US and its allies should do a lot more to achieve that, even if they refuse to intervene militarily. All they need to do and quickly is to make good on the statement of VP Biden, at least as a first step.