Given that I believe that humans are genetically "equipped" to communicate in a face-to-face environment, I try to remain mindful of the ease of misunderstanding, that posting on these threads presents. Hence, I will only say that I think I may understand your post. Agreeing? Hmmmm...
While in no way trying to defend the behavior of the family Assad, past or present, let's consider for a while their behavior since 9-11. I don't have a link handy, but it's my understanding that Syria was surprisingly cooperative in providing information – very valuable information. Some, who have thought about the depth of their cooperation, believe they were trying to “make nice”. Whether this was out of fear, or because we were the remaining super power, or whatever, was apparently never explored. Instead, the neo-cons had their ideology and agenda. A new burgeoning relationship between the U.S. and Syria, wasn’t the role that was already typed in for Syria. So, from Syria’s perspective, after trying to demonstrate cooperation, the “payoff” was the Axis-of-evil. Now, I have no way of knowing, what a different approach would have yielded. To have even considered a different approach would have required not lumping all groups that practiced terrorism together, and branding them as our enemy. Which we didn’t. Most people don’t consider the IRA, or the Basque separatists as enemies of the U.S., but because it was convenient, all Islamic terrorists, and the Columbian rebels were lumped - and we’re at war with them. While this dovetailed nicely with where the neo-cons wanted to take the country, I’m not sure that direction was best for the U.S.’s future. An alternative would have been to concentrate on international terrorists with a global reach, and to have carefully distinguished between the problems of the U.S. and those of Israel.
As we know, such a course was not taken. Instead, we invaded Iraq. So in Muslim eyes, we are now guilty of the same “sin” as Israel – we’ve invaded and occupied a piece of the ummah. And, big surprise, we now have some of the same problems. And dealing with them in the same ineffective way. When you come across a swamp full of alligators, I suppose you could jump in and start flailing away with the biggest stick you can find, but that seems to me to be an invitation to get bitten. I’d rather toss in some bait, and see if I could get the gators to fight each other. In a similar fashion, why not develop a well-considered plan to deal with our specific problem in the ME, than to use it as a springboard for hegemony Then all kinds of possibilities occur. You can use the carrot (bait), instead of just the stick. If Syria wants a rapprochement, fine, reward that behavior, establish the relationship, and just when the image of the significant benefits of the new relationship are coming into focus, you say “Oh, by the way, all of this comes at a price. A kind of code of ethics for civilized nations.” Now for this to have any force, the same face must be turned toward Israel.
It’s not that I don’t believe in ever using the “stick”, it’s more like I believe that using it is a kind of admission of failure. If I’d been a little bit smarter, maybe …But in the real world, evil exists and there are some really bad dudes. Sometimes, only the last resort works. With this approach, you never get hegemony. It’s more like a flavor of “walk softly and carry a big stick”.
Just have a strong preference for the clever carrot over the stick.
lurqer |
