KERRY'S MISSTEPS
THE SPINE BLOG [TNR]
Franklin Delano Roosevelt believed that America had a rendezvous with destiny. What is wrong with John F. Kerry is that he seems to believe that it is he who has a rendezvous with destiny. One of his good friends should tell him, as this culture endlessly advises other obsessed people, "to come to closure." Put it behind you. You will not be president of the United States. At least then, Kerry will not feel obliged to write, as he did Thursday in The Boston Globe, a fatuous and ignorant article , "A Crucial Time For Saving Lebanon's Fragile Democracy," which I cannot believe even he thinks of as an honest--let alone deep--analysis.
Even his first line is, if not a lie, a deception: "I traveled throughout the Middle East this winter." Please, you spent a few days in the Middle East, and you came back with the same cliches with which you went. And the same deceiving cant. Kerry compares Lebanon's prime minister, Fouad Siniora, with George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Siniora may be the best the Lebanese people can have now but such portentous analogies only demonstrate the flabbiness of Kerry's, no, not of his stomach, but his mind. Why does he exaggerate? So that he can compensate with grandeur for the shabbiness of his analysis, the way perfume can sometimes cover a rotten stench. What Siniora never had the bravery to tell the United Nations, let's say, was that the Security Council had left his country with the promise of Resolution 1559 (September 2004) and, at the same time, hostage to Hezbollah which was lacing his country with a network of rocket launchers that were not intended for peaceful purposes. He did not call out his troops because he couldn't trust them. He didn't fire his Hezbollah cabinet members even when then they were waging war as much against Lebanese sovereignty as against Israel.
I suppose we have to back Siniora but without illusion, of which Kerry has, alas, too much. He quotes the present matriarch of the Phalange as saying, "We pay a heavy price for sharing what you believe in," as if her the "we" in her presuming remark referred to a democratic movement like Polish Solidarity or Czech Charter 77. Again, given the ugly facts of this world, the Maronite Phalange is a relatively trustworthy ally: the enemy of my enemy is my friend. But the Phalange, after all, is a tribute to and imitation of Franco's Phalange, and that does tell us something. Like the Spanish Phalange, the Cedar Phalange resorted to mass massacre as a tactic of retribution, as when it slaughtered some 800 Palestinians in Sabra and Shatilla after the Syrians had assassinated the matriarch's brother-in-law, Bashir Gemayel.
This is not a rational calculus. But this is, after all, the Arab world. Moreover, in being a patsy to the prime Maronite Christian militia, Kerry adapts and endorses the Phalange pretension to being an outpost of western civilization among the wild men. It is just not true, and it is an index of Kerry's (let us grant him this just for kindness sake) innocence that he stands behind it. Still, after identifying himself with Siniora and the Phalange as the keys to Lebanon's future, he goes directly over to their certified enemy, the Ba'ath minority Alawite regime of Bashar Assad.
To test the Syrians directly, as the Baker-Hamilton Commission suggested, Senator Christopher Dodd of Connecticut and I met with President Bashar al- Assad for more than two hours. The conversation confirmed my belief that engagement with Syria could be useful in advancing our objectives across the region. The Syrian leadership will act according to its own self-interest. The challenge is to get Syria's leaders to make a strategic decision to change direction, and shift their allegiance away from Iran.
Kerry's credulity, blithe credulity, (and Dodd's, too) is not to be trusted. So Assad has assured him ... Bullshit. Assad assures people of lots of things, including that, as Kerry testified last week, there are no Syrians delivering arms to Hezbollah. Let him ask Siniora whether he trusts Assad. Or Mme. Germayel, with whom, doubtless, Kerry conversed in French. What is the pay-off for Assad? There isn't one. There is a big "ought." Syria should do this ... and this ... and this. But what Assad wants is Lebanon. He wants it more than he wants the Golan Heights. He won't give Lebanon up because Kerry and James Baker say he should, which Baker hasn't said anyway. In any case, if it is a deal with Assad that Kerry wants, the only deal available is a deal for control of Lebanon. In Assad's eyes, Leabonon is Syria. Yes, Kerry may have some scruples about this but they can easily be frittered away for what would be termed a comprehensive settlement. What does Baker envision? For him deals are made with the strongmen. In this case, Assad. In the past, let us recall, it was Saddam. Yet there is a pay-off for Lebanon, too. And it comes in the old-fashioned solution to everything. The U.S. will pour zillions of dollars into Lebanon in competition with the flood of Iranian cash via Syria. Thank God, Kerry leaves out the totemic words, "Marshall Plan." But there are other examples of his silliness. He quotes the "street-wise" New York mayor, Fiorello LaGuardia, "there is no Republican way to clean the street." And then he adds from his own wisdom, "This is Politics 101: If you don't deliver services you don't get the support of the people." Is Kerry suggesting that people's belief systems, even deeply held and fanatical belief systems, can be simply bought off by cash or by more efficient garbage collection? Does no one in Kerry's office read his prose before it is shipped out to the Boston Globe where, of course, it is adored. One more piece of wisdom: "This comprehensive approach, similar to the one used with North Korea, must include the full participation of moderate Arab countries like Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia -which, like Syria- have largely Sunni populations." Is he under the impression that our multi-lateral approaches to North Korea and Iran have brought them back from the brink? Am I mistaken? Doesn't Pyongyang already have nukes? And as for the largely Sunni populations of the four Arab countries he mentions, he again doesn't understand the differences. Jordan is a totally Sunni country. You won't find a single Shi'a soul in Jordan unless he's a visitor. Saudi Arabia is a Sunni country although it may have 10% Shi'a and although one can't know this for sure because there hasn't been a census in decades. Egypt is as Sunni as India is Hindu and Italy is Italian. And Syria does have a substantial Sunni majority. And there lies the problem for the Assad regime, built from the minority, vaguely Shi'a, sectarian and phobic Alawite slice of Syrian society. The Sunnis despise the rule of the Ba'ath and the Assad family and its consigliere. Don't forget: a hefty proportion of the Sunnis are Muslim Brothers and, I suppose, sisters, too. To put it starkly, they are all at war with each other. I suspect that this is too complex for Kerry to grasp or to parse for an authoritative essay in his home town newspaper. But, if this is so, please don't let him try again. Let him be off to Idaho where no one, and certainly not a Secrte Service man, will push him off the slopes. |
