Trapped?

Is French President Hollande now trapped, as many in the French media claim?

President Obama's decision to consult Congress before ordering military strikes against Syria, following a poison gas attack on a Damascus suburb, and that both France and the US accuse Assad of having instigated, has clearly put him in an uncomfortable position.

Before he can intervene militarily against Assad, as he has pledged to do, he must await the decision of a foreign parliament...France, though possessing significant military means, could not act alone... 

Some in France, where the Gaullist tradition of pride and independence looms large, consider his position to be a humiliating one...

Vincent Desportes, a former general in the French army, and now a professor at L'Institut d'études politiques de Paris, told Le Monde that President Obama's Syrian policy reversal clearly evinces contempt for France. The day before, President Hollande explained why France was ready to take its responsibilities. The next day, his great ally shoves him in an impasse.

Hollande is under no constitutional obligation to follow in Obama's and British PM Cameron's footsteps and seek parliamentary approval before ordering any military strikes.

A president must do so only forty days after a conflict has begun.

Nevertheless, a debate on the issue will be held next Wednesday both at the Senate and National Assembly. These debates will not be followed by a vote, therefore...

Yet, after both the British PM and the American President sought parliamentary approval before taking any action, can Hollande do any less?

Prime minister Jean-Marc Ayrault is to meet parliamentary leaders from both the majority and the opposition on Monday afternoon.

Yet, the demands for a vote are more and more numerous and clamorous.

A former prominent member of the previous Sarkozy administration and now head of a centrist party, l'UDI, union of democrats and independents, Jean-Louis Borloo, is demanding just that, as are some Socialist and Green supporters of Hollande.

Jean-Luc Mélanchon, a former Socialist party official and candidate in the 2012 French presidential election, now head of the Front de Gauche, a leftist party, said the following: the British voted, the Germans will vote, as will the Americans, and we will be the only ones not to, and let one man decide by himself? M. Hollande is not the king who decides when the nation goes to war. That is the parliament's business, not the responsibility of two people in an office.

In the twenty first century, how can one man have the sole power to decree war and peace? wrote Patrick Apel-Muller, in the Frecnh Communist party's daily, L'Humanité.

That is a relevant question, all the more so as 59% of the French, according to a recent poll, oppose any military action against Syria...

A debate without a vote seems more and more difficult, politically, though of course it would be constitutional.

Yet, France prides itself on being a great democracy, if not a model...Would that status be compatible with denying the representatives of la République a chance to express the people's will on a major issue of war and peace?

MM. Cameron and Obama may have done the French an invaluable favor, however indirectly.

In the V th Republic, the parliament's powers are limited and no match for the executive branch's.

Mr. Obama's initiative, a necessary and constitutional one, for the issue of war and peace is surely the province of elected assemblies, may yet have the effect of reviving and emboldening the French parliament. That would be perhaps the only positive development to emerge from the tragic Syrian crisis...

Will M. Hollande also have the courage to listen to the people?

(the photograph above of President François Hollande is by Reuters)

Death is Death...

Death is Death...

On April 22, 1915, Captain Fritz Haber, a German chemist and future Nobel prize winner, was on the front lines in Ypres, Belgium. A pioneer in the development of chlorine gas and other chemical weapons, such as nerve and tear gas, the scientist, a friend of Albert Einstein's and Max Planck's, was present to supervise the first poison gas attack in military history.

On that day, the Germans launched 167 tons of chlorine against Canadian, British and French troops.

Some 1,000 were killed. Two days later, on a windy day, another attack killed 4,000 more...

For Haber, who believed that during peace time a scientist belongs to the world but during war time he belongs to his country, death by poison gas was just one more method to kill the enemy, no better or worse than any other. After all, he said, death is death...

The Geneva Protocol of 1925 however, banned the use of chemical weapons. The Chemical Weapons Convention of 1997 prohibited the production of poison gases.

Last week, the Assad government, according to Western intelligence services, launched a chemical attack on a Damascus suburb held by rebels forces seeking to overthrow the regime.

According to figures contained in an intelligence summary released by the US government on Friday, 1,429 Syrians died in the attack, including 426 children.

Many in the West and elsewhere, particularly after having seen the horrific You Tube videos of the victims, were appalled and demanded action.

Last August, President Obama indicated that the use of such weapons by Assad constituted crossing a red line that would lead the US to reconsider its policy of non-intervention in Syria.

We have been very clear to the Assad regime, but also to other players on the ground, that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized. That would change my calculus. That would change my equation, he declared on August 20, 2012.

Yesterday, Secretary of state John Kerry forcefully claimed that that red line had been crossed, and that action was now necessary.

History will judge us all extraordinarily harshly if we turn a blind eye to a dictator's wanton use of weapons of mass destruction, he said during a press briefing. We cannot accept a world where women and children and innocent civilians are gassed on a terrible scale, he added.

Action was required if only to preserve US credibility.

They (other nations) want to see whether the United States and our friends mean what we say. It matters deeply to the credibility and the future of the United States of America and our allies, he said.

The French president, François Hollande concurred. It is important to punish Syria, precisely because it had crossed what he also referred to as a red line, he told Le Monde.

The British were conspicuously absent from these proceedings, Prime minister Cameron having lost an important vote in Westminster Thursday that would have paved the way (after a follow-up vote next week) for British participation in any attack against the Syrian regime.

Ironically, if historically correct, Kerry referred to France as America's oldest ally, during the press briefing, much to to the chagrin of many in Britain...

So, a red line has been crossed.

Yet, has it?

During the 1970s and 1980s, the Soviet Union resorted to chemical weapons numerous times, particularly against resistance forces in Laos, Cambodia and Afghanistan.

What did the international community, the UN, do about this gross violation of international law?

Nothing.

In the early 1980s, during the endless Iraq-Iran war, Hussein regularly used chemical weapons in order to counter Iranian ground offensives, with US help.

According to the magazine Foreign Policy, but a generation ago, America's military and intelligence communities knew and did nothing to stop a series of nerve gas attacks far more devastating than anything Syria has seen.

As retired Air Force Col. Rick Francona told Foreign Policy, the Iraqis never told us that they intended to use nerve gas. They didn't have to. We already knew.

Francona was a military attaché in Baghdad at the time. Recently declassified CIA documents reveal that the Reagan administration actively aided Saddam Hussein, providing him with intelligence on Iranian troop movements. The Reagan administration decided that it was better to let the attacks continue if they might turn the tide of the war. And even if they were discovered, the CIA wagered that international outrage and condemnation would be muted, Foreign Policy writes.

The documents show that senior U.S. Officials were being regularly informed about the scale of the nerve gas attacks. They are tantamount to an official American admission of complicity in some of the most gruesome chemical weapon attacks ever launched, the magazine added.

In 1988, Hussein launched a nerve gas attack on his own citizens, in Halabja, a Kurdish village.

Between 3,000 and 5,000 Kurds were killed....

What were the consequences? There were not any at all.

For the West, defeating Khomeini's Iran was of paramount importance, whatever the means employed...

As such, there are red lines but some are redder than others...

Yet, the US and France assure us, if a military intervention is necessary in order to dissuade others from resorting to chemical weapons, it will be a limited one.

On Thursday, the White House insisted that the attack would be discrete and limited.

Yesterday, President Obama described the upcoming operation as a limited and narrow act.

Hollande emphasized the fact that he had no intention of launching an attack to overthrow Assad, but rather parry the latter's military offensive.

Discrete and limited?

What possible strategic value can such a strike have?

What possible effect can a flurry of Tomahawk missiles have on the military situation on the ground?

No matter, MM. Holland and Obama have but one strategy, apparently: punish Assad and move on...

Both gentlemen are likely to be disappointed by the results.

There's a broad naiveté in the political class about America's obligations in foreign policy issues, and scary simplicity about the effects that employing American military power can achieve, retired Lt. Gen. Gregory S. Newbold told the WP.

Perhaps limited military action can be useful as part of a broader coherent strategy to manage and contain the Syrian crisis.

In an ABC News interview earlier this month, Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said it (the war in Iraq) has branded in me the idea that the use of military power must be part of an overall strategic solution that includes international partners and a whole government. Simply the application of force rarely produces and, in fact, maybe never produces the outcome we seek...

A retired senior officer involved in operational planning in the Middle East said this to the WP: what is the political end state we're to achieve? I don't know what it is. We say it's not regime change . If it's punishment, there are other ways to punish.

For his part, Jim Inhofe, Senator from Oklahoma, the highest ranking Republican on the Senate armed services committee, told The Guardian, it is vital we avoid shortsighted military action that would have little impact on the long-term trajectory of the conflict. We can't simply launch a few missiles and hope for the best.

In addition, has anyone envisioned the consequences of a discrete and limited attack on Damascus?

How many hapless civilians will we inadvertently kill; how much more hatred of the West will we sow in the region, as yet another Muslim country is attacked by a US-led coalition; what will that do to advance the fortunes of Islamic extremists across the region; how about for Mr. Assad himself, when he triumphantly emerges from his bunker to declare victory against the imperialist and colonial aggressors?

Do we really believe that he will feel chastened, humbled and intimidated by our discrete strikes?

Death is death, Haber observed.

It is difficult to quibble with that point.

The ghastly and vicious attack on civilians in a Damascus suburb is indeed a disgrace.

No one, not even in Moscow or Beijing can deny this fact.

The indignation sweeping the West and the world is natural as are calls to act in order to prevent Assad from slaughtering his own people.

Yet, why does the death of 1,500, tragic as that is, engender a wave of indignation that the the murder of 100,000 could not?

More than 100,000 had already been killed before the August 21 attack, much to our own chagrin, perhaps, but without any of our leaders actively planning to stop the bloodshed...

One gas attack, and MM. Hollande and Obama want to launch another war in the Middle East(for even discrete strikes constitute an act of war), even though they solemnly promise it is not a war but a penalty, to quote M. Hollande?

What message, furthermore are they sending to Assad and all the other thugs across the planet?

Butchering your own civilian population with conventional means is acceptable, morally acceptable to the international community. It must be, since there has been no talk of intervention, however discrete, until now.

As long as Assad keeps resorting to fighter jets, gunship helicopters, missiles, bombs, shells, tanks, artillery, then he may proceed as he pleases. MM. Hollande and Obama will do nothing to stop his vile and dastardly assaults on civilians.

100,000 have already been killed that way.

What moral threshold has been crossed by the poison gas attack?

MM.Holland and Obama could live with the fact that so many had been killed these last thirty months...

One poison gas attack, and they are now seething with indignation?

How authentic is this sudden pang of conscience?

Death is death...

If you've seen any of the pictures, it's definitely heart wrenching. You know, death by sarin is, I'm sure, horrific. But death by shrapnel is not a good thing, either, Matthew Baum, an international affairs expert at Harvard University, told McClatchy.

In essence, is the forthcoming attack really about Assad or is it instead about MM. Hollande and Obama?

Embarrassed by their callous inaction up to now, by those casualties mounting by the day, they are convinced that their resolve will be made manifest, and their credibility restored by a limited strike on Damascus.

If their true objective is to protect the Syrian people, they should develop a strategy to achieve just that, which entails an invasion of Syria, and the overthrow of Assad.

If it is not, if they are not ready and willing to pay that price (and who would be after Iraq), then they should leave well enough alone, and spare the Syrians further suffering. Surely, they do not need to be plummeted with Tomahawks fired from ships which will have already left the region tow days after the beginning of the strikes, so that MM. Hollande and Obama can assuage their conscience, while playing the role of global avengers...

(the photograph above of victims of the posion gas attack in a Damascus suburb last week is by Bassam Kabieh/Reuters)

It is time to dismantle the national security and surveillance state...

The supporters of the national security and surveillance state, and there are many, particulalry in the editorial pages of major US newspapers and magazines, claim that, yes, they are also concerned about the scale of the Verizon and PRISM programs designed by the NSA.

The former, authorized by a secret court, enabled the NSA to demand that Verizon provide the phone records of all its 99 million customers for a three month period beginning late April, after the Boston Marathon bombing.

The second program provided the agency with direct access to the servers of major internet companies such as Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Apple. Hence the e-mails, search history and file transfers of the customers of all these providers were obtained by the NSA, without the latters' consent...

Yes, I worry about potential government abuse of privacy from a program designed to prevent another 9/11-abuse that , so far, does not appear to have happened, wrote, the relieved Tom Friedman, of the NYT.

We have to remain vigilant that the snooping stays within reasonable bounds,stressed TIME's Joe Klein.

Yet, in the end, they have absolutely no qualms about sacrificing their fundamental rights if that is the price to pay to protect the country.

I have no problem with the government knowing that I'm doing my job, concluded Mr. Klein.

A great many lives are potentially at stake and our national security is more important than any marginal-indeed, mythical-rights that we may have conceded in the Patriot Act legislation, he wrote.

The right to privacy, the Fourth Amendment, marginal, mythical rights?

Equally, Mr. Friedman believes what he calls the trade off is worth it.

I'll reluctantly, very reluctantly, trade off the government using data mining to look for suspicious patterns in phone numbers called and e-mail addresses, he wrote.

The Verizon program targets evry single one of its customers. Hence, the agency knows who you called, when, where and for how long...According to the WSJ, ATT&T and Sprint customers were also targeted. Does the NSA really need of all your phone records to keep you safe?

Can it, should it be trusted not to divulge or exploit information you may want to keep confidential?

Why?

Unlike the Verizon program, PRISM granted the NSA access to the content of your-mails and other data. Hence, communicatuions are directly monitored by the agency.

The consent of the providers is not required and, apparently, not requested.

If they are doing this, they are doing it without our knowledge, a senior IT executive told The Guardian.

The PRISM program allows the NSA, the world's largest surveillance organization, to obtain targeted communications without having to request them from the service providers and without having to obtain individual court orders, wrote The Guardian.

But that does not seem to matter.

In the case of the PRISM program, the NSA is targeting foreign nationals, not US citizens, and not even individuals in the United States. And all of this collection is being done with a warrant, issued by a federal judge, under authorities approved by Congress, wrote Marc A. Thiessen, an enthusiastic supporter of the NSA programs, in the WP.

This seems harmless enough for, as we know, foreigners have no rights whatsoever anyway...

This has particularly offended the European Union, which is demanding an explanation from Washington...

Yet, what makes Mr. Thiessen so sure that, tomorrow, the NSA will not be interested in his e-mails and  files? Will he then still claim that Big Brother isn't watching you?

With the technologies now available, and currently exploited to the fullest by the NSA and other intelligence agencies, can we trust the powers that be not to spy on you, whenever they deems it appropriate to do so?

The apologists of the national security and surveillance state contend that those who ask such questions are but mere paranoids of the left and right, to quote the trusting and confident Mr. Klein.

Yet, that paranoïa, if that is what it is, is constantly being fueled.

The architects of the security and surveillance apparatus, MM Cheney, Bush and Obama, foremost among them, have done their utmost to ensure that what is being done in your name to protect the country from terrorist attacks (a threat even Mr. Klein concedes is a low-level terrorist threat) remains secret, and is thus never the object of a free and open debate.

The assumption here, is that the state knows what it has to do, does not need anyone's input, and that a robust debate could prove disruptive, and potentially lethal to an extensive surveillance program.

Case in point, the state claims that the programs are authorized by Section 215 of the Patriot Act. Democratic Senators Ron Wydem of Oregon and Mark Udall of Utah dispute this contention.

How does the government interpret Section 215? That is classified, and thus a state secret...

Similarly, the PRISM program, according to the government, is authorized by Section 702 of the 2008

Fisa Amendments Act. How?

That, naturally, is classified information...

As a result of the debate the Snowden leaks has engendered, and that, disingenuously President Obama pretends to welcome, although he has never done anything to initiate and promote such a discussion,  Democratic Senator Jeff Merkelly of Oregon indicated on Tuesday that he intended to propose a bill that would compell the government to render public its interpretations of the two laws mentioned..

I think that Americans deserve to know how our government is interpreting the Patriot Act and the Fisa Amendments Act, a spokesman for the senator declared.

Today, the supporters of the national security and surveillance state are simply asking us to trust the government, because they feel confident, or wish to, that it is acting appropriately and legally, even if we and they, have no idea what the administration makes of those laws...

We may very well be paranoîd, but are they not naïve?

Last March, during a public hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee, James Clapper, director of National Intelligence, was aked the following question: does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?

No sir, not wittingly. There are cases when they could inadvertantly perhaps collect, but not wittingly, he answered.

That statement, needless to say, was brazenly disingenuous, though none of the NSA's supporters seemed the least troubled by it...

Clapper almost conceded as much, in an interview with Andrea Mitchell of ABC. I responded in what I thought was the most truthful, or least untruthful manner, he said.

And yet, we are taken to task for not trusting the servants of the national security and surveillance state and calling into question their commitment to protecting our fundamenrtal rights and the Constitution. Mr. Klein scoffs at those he claims see the federal government as a vast corporate conspiracy or a criminal enterprise.

Let us for a moment examine the record of the new security and surveillance structure created by the Bush and Cheney administration, and bolstered by the current president.

Warrantless wiretapping; secret prisons; Guantanamo; military commissions; indefinite detention; torture; drone strikes that have killed thousands in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, and Somlia; targeted killings without due process of American citizens including teenagers.

Should we allow the architects of such a national security structure to be the custodians of our fundamental rights and freedoms?

Paranoïa or naïeveté?

Mr. Friedman is ready to foresake his fundamental rights because he fears a second 9/11 would lead to the creation of a police state; he thus seeks  to prevent a day where, out of fear, we give government license to look at anyone, any e-mail, any phone call, anywhere, anytime, he wrote.

But, is this not precisely where we are today?

In his interview with The Guardian's Glenn Greenwald, Edward Snowden said the following:

Any analyst at any time can target anyone. Any selector. Anywhere. I, sitting at my desk, had the authority to wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant to a federal judge to even the president if I had a personal e-mail.

Should a government in a democracy wield such powers?

How do we know it is not doing so already, domestically?

Should we simply trust it not to do so?

Why?

Have not governments always used to the fullest extent all the powers that they had and even those they did not have if they could get away with it?

And, if such powers are not abused today, how can we ensure that they will not be tomorrow by less scrpulous leaders?

Are Americans prepared to take that risk?

Yes, but what if another 9/11 were to occur?

And we really are in a continuing, low-intensity, high-risk conflict with a diffuse, committed and ideologically motivated enemy. And, for a moment, just imagine how much bloviating would be wafting across our political spectrum if, in the wake of an incident of domestic terrorism, an American president and his administration had failed to take full advantage of the existing telephonic data to do what is possible to find those needles in the haystacks , wrote David Simon creator of HBO's The Wire, quoted by Mr. Friedman.

What are the odds of that ever happening again?

Should we foresake our fundamental rights anyway, just in case?

And yet, is that sacrifice even necessary?

Is trampling the Constitution the wisest way to ensure America is no longer the target of Islamic extremists?

Why do they attack America in the first place?

That is the first and fundamental question to ask.

The policies that the US pursues in the Muslim world, it is safe to say, have alienated millions and infuriated a significant minority, who believe that America is waging war on Islam, particularly since 9/11.

And who can blame them for thinking that?

Afghanistan, Iraq, Abu Ghraib, Bagram, drone strikes...Just how many Muslims have America and the West humiliated and killed since 9/11?

What then should be the first step in a new policy aimed at mitigating this fury?

Stop killing Muslims and supporting those who do!

How much does the security and surveillance structure cost per year to the American taxpayer?

How many hundreds of billions of dollars?

Think of the amount of goodwill the US could purchase with just a fraction of that amount by funding hospitals, schools, agricultural projects, and electrical plants in Pakistan and Afghanistan; if the US made a genuine and even handed effort to finally resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; if the US stopped supporting oil-rich tyrannical kingdoms and sheikdoms in the region; and negotiated in good faith at last with Iran, instead of pursuing a sanctions-based policy that has been failing since 1979?

That will do more to protect the homeland than any PRISM program...

Indeed, in the meantime, it is not the NSA, the CIA, the DHS, the TSA the CPB that will shield the US from harm. It is a sane and benevolent foreign policy.

Alienated Muslims youths who become extremists do not loathe Americans for who they are...but for what they do, especially in the Muslim world.

The reaction to 9/11, which I would characterize as hysterical, was understandable given the scale of the horrendous and barbaric attack...

In 2013, twelve years on,  it is time to roll back the national security and surveillance state while it is still possible to do so...Let us hope it is not already too late...

(the photograph above of Edward Snowden in HK newspapers is by Bobby Yip/Reuters)

Homs is burning and no one cares......

Baba Amr...

This beleaguered district of Homs, a city located 140 kilometers north of Damascus, on a strategic road leading to the Mediterranean, finally fell Tuesday morning after a further round of ruthless fighting that lasted two weeks.

Baba Amr...

The Sunday Times reporter Marie Colvin and the French photographer Rémi Ochlik were in Baba Amr thirteen months ago as the neighborhood was being besieged by the Syrian army. They were killed while trying to convey to the outside world the anguish and suffering of a hapless civilian population victimized by its own army, their makeshift media center the target of an artillery barrage (see this post for an account of these events). Bab Amr in Homs had been under control of Assad’s forces ever since…

Two weeks ago, the Syrian army launched a series of raids in order to crush the last remaining pockets of rebel resistance in central Homs. The Syrian rebels seized the moment and attempted to recover Bab Amr. Those efforts were not successful and on Tuesday, Assad’s forces repelled the revolutionaries and regained full control of the neighborhood once again…Syrian regime forces have recaptured total control of the district of Baba Amr, after more than two weeks, after rebel fighters had infiltrated the area and seized several neighborhoods, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Syrian human rights organization based in the UK, reported. The army used war planes, rockets and tank shells to bombard the district, it added.

The Syrian Revolution General Commission, a coalition of some forty Syrian opposition groups, released a video depicting the damage inflicted on the city. This is total destruction…residential buildings have been destroyed…shops have been destroyed…everything inside the buildings has been destroyed, an activist declares in the footage. Homs is burning and no one cares, he added…

Although they lost this battle for Baba Amr, the Free Syrian Army and other opposition military groups have become gradually more proficient on the battlefield. Arms purchases and shipments have significantly increased over the last year as it has become clearer and clearer that Assad will never relinquish power except by force of arms.

As a result, a complex and efficient weapons procurement program was set up by Assad’s numerous foes in the region. Indeed, a considerable volume of Croatian weaponry was bought by the latter, particularly Qatar and Saudi Arabia, and flown to Turkey and Jordan, and then smuggled into Syria. The intensity and frequency of these flights (are) suggestive of a well-planned and coordinated clandestine military logistics operation, Hugh Griffiths, of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, told the NYT.

The CIA has greatly facilitated this operation, helping select the recipients of the arms shipments, so as to avoid the weapons falling into the hands of Islamic extremists also fighting the Assad regime, such as the battle-hardened Jabhat al-Nusra Front, an organization the US has characterized as an al Qaeda affiliate.

The volume of weaponry seeping into rebel territory appears to be considerable. People hear the amounts flowing in, and it is huge. But they burn through a million rounds of ammo in two weeks, a former US official familiar with the operation told the NYT.

Yet, the fighters on the ground pitted against Assad’s forces complain that the effort is insufficient. The rebels demand anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons in order to level the military playing field. As of yet, these weapons have not been provided, chiefly due to US resistance. The Americans fear that such weaponry could eventually fall into the hands of Islamic extremists, who could then target civilian aircrafts in terrorist attacks...

In short, more weaponry is reaching the anti-Assad fighters on the ground, but not enough and not the type that would be most usefull...

In order to tip the military balance in the rebels' favor, France and the UK, unlike the US, are considering arming ther rebels. The two European powers are striving to convince the European Union to lift its arms embargo imposed on the variuous Syrian parties involved in the conflict.

Our objective is to convinvce our partners, by all diplomatic means available...If, by chance, one or two nations were to veto our proposition, then France would take it upon itself to do what it felt it must do, French president François Hollande declared on March 15.

French foreign minister Laurent Fabius elaborated on the issue in a radio interview on monday. The current situation is disastrous. If we wish to prevent Syria from disintegrating, and the extremists from prevailing, then we must strive for a political solution, and thus achieve a military balance of power among the various rebel factions, he stated.

Furthermore, we're hoping the Syrian opposition will remain moderate. We could never accept a radicalization toward extemism, he added.

Yet, this effort to bolster militarily the rebel forces on the ground may have been grievously undermined by the internecine conflicts bedevelling the Syrian political opposition.

Mouaz al-Khatib, leader of the Syrian Opposition Coalition, resigned last Sunday. The former imam of the Umayyad Mosque of Damascus condemmed the constant foreign meddling within the organization. Who is ready to obey (those foreign countries) will support him. And those who refuse to obey endure starvation and siege, he declared. He also objected to the designation, as did the US, of a prime minister, Ghassan Hitto to distibute aid and administer those parts of Syriua under rebel control, as a needless distractionl.

Mr. Khatib's recent call to negotiate peace with the current Assad regime had already undermined hilm politically. The Muslim Brotherghood, a powerful force within the Syrian opposition, had vigorously objected to this initiative. Indeed, the Muslim Brotherhood has been ruthlessly persecuted by the Assad family for over forty years...

Not coincidentally, Mr. Hitto, a Syrian of Kurdish origin who has lived in the US for years and became an American citizen, was the candidate of the Muslim Brotherhood, and the latter's patron, Qatar.

This nomination simultaneously allowed the Muslim Brotherhood to bolster its influence within the Syrian National Coalitionl and weaken the widely respected Khatib.

Qatar also claimed that it had to act quickly in order to invite the new prime minister to occupy Syria's vacant seat at the the Arab League meeting taking place in Doha March 26 and 27.

Saudi Arabia, miffed at being outmaneuvered by Qatar, leaned on its client, the Supreme Military Command, the military wing of the opposition coalition and a major recepient of Saudi largess, which then promptly denounced the nomination and refused to recognize the new prime minister.

We unequivocally declare that the Free Syrian Army, in all its formations...conditions its support and cooperation on the achievement of a political agreement on the name of a prime minister, General Salim Idriss, leader of the Supreme Military Command, declared.

A Free Syrian Army spokesman added that they could not recognize a prime minister who was forced on the Narional Coalition, rather than chosen by consensus.

In short, the Syrian opposition's curent disarray is depriving the West of a credible and effective partner that it could assist and potentially guide towards the establishment of a civilized regime in Damascus once Assad falls, for fall he eventually will...

In the end, chaos can only serve and embolden the Islamic extremists who are already gaining ground, due to their military prowess on the front lines.

We have a leader who resigned, an interim prtime minister whose election was conducted without transparency and the formal opposition has failed. I don't know what happens if Assad falls, Rafif Jouejati, a spokesman for the Local Coordination Committees, a network of opposition organizations, told McClatchy.

At the Arab League meeting in Doha, the Syrian National Coalition president was invited to take Syria's seat for the very first time. Syria was expelled from the organization in late 2011, due to its brutal repression of the opposition movement.

The Assad regime shrilly denounced this move. The League has handed Syria's seat to bandits and thugs, to the Coalition which thinks it can sit in the name of the Syrian people. They have forgotten that it is the people who grant powers and not the emirs of obscurantism and sand, the official news outlet al-Thawra wrote.

In his speech to the Arab League Khatib characterized the conflict in Syria as a struggle between freedom and slavery, justice and tyranny.

He also called upon Nato to protect civilian populations in the north of the country from air raids with the Patriot missiles already installed on Turkish territory near the border.

Nato, however has no plans to intervene in the conflict.

Yet, the battle being fought in Tal Abyad, Raqqa province, on the Turkish border, may be a harbinger of things to come.

There, moderate Islamic militants of the Farouq Battalions have been confronting the Islamic extremists of the Jabhat al-Nusra Front, who seek to impose a caliphate on the nation., for control of the area and its border crossings...

On Sunday, four people were killed in the fighting.

It seems we cannot deal with them peacefully, Abu Mansour, of the Farouq Battalion, told McClatchy, referring to the Jabhat al Nusra Front. So it seems inevitable we will fight them, whether it is before the regime falls or after.

Thus, this confrontation no doubt awaits the Syrian people.

After two years of inaction on the part of the civilized world (a posture some would no doubt characterize as irresponsible if not criminal), which has allowed the extremists to gain a considertable foothold in the country, the Syrians are being left to their own devices.

Tomorrow, all of Syria may resemble Tal Abyad, Raqqa province...

And who shall we blame for that development?

(the photograph above of Homs in ruins is by Yazan Homsy/Reuters)

Will the "normal" president be up to the task?

It was a sweet victory indeed for those who longed for a successor to François Mitterrand.
For just this evening, this one day, allow us to express our emotions. Nothing will be easy, simple or free. Yet, one can sense, however fleetingly, a sense of hope, of fraternity in the air.  Greater justice for the downtrodden, less arrogance in the elite.
We are not asking for much, so please do not deny us this hope, which justifies ten years of patience, wrote the columnist Laurent Joffrin in the leftwing weakly, Le Nouvel Observateur.
The Socialists had not won a national election since 1997, and a presidential poll since 1988...
But last Sunday, May 6, François Hollande, the Socialist party candidate, defeated the incumbent president Nicolas Sarkozy (51.6% to 48.4%) to become only the second Socialist president in the history of the Vth Republic.
The financial meltdown of 2008, the economic, debt, Greek bankruptcy and Euro crises that followed greatly facilitated Mr. Holland’s task in winning the presidency. Mr. Sarkozy however, was also responsible for his defeat, which he readily admitted in his concession speech on Sunday night.
Although widely admired for his limitless energy, determination, drive, and ability to handle international crises deftly, Mr. Sarkozy’s abrasive personality and aggressive style alienated may, too many in France.
Sarkozy sought to tackle all the major issues simultaneously. Micromanaging government business, he hardly left any breathing space to his own ministers.
One of the latter once quipped that Sarkozy was the first politician he had ever met who wanted to be elected president so he could be prime minister…
In addition, his determination to modernize the presidential function (he rejected the traditional model of President as the wise, aloof arbiter above the fray), his unabashed admiration for those who succeeded, and willingness to socialize with them openly, antagonized the French who still view money and success with suspicion.
He was lambasted and caricatured relentlessly as the president of the rich who wore 70,000 Euros watches and spent weekends on the yachts of millionaires…
Hence, the French condemned his hyper presidency as divisive both socially and politically.
As a result, Mr. Hollande, affable, friendly and wily, campaigned on the promise that, if elected, he would be a normal president.
Mr. Holland will officially become president next Tuesday. It will then become his responsibility to deal with the budget, debt and Euro crises that are threatening French and European prosperity.
What will he do?
During the campaign, he promised that he would put an end to austerity.
I don’t want a Europe of austerity, where nations are forced to their knees, he added, obviously with the plight of the Greeks in mind.
In order to increase state revenue, he pledged to establish a 75% tax rate for top earners. Yet, he also promised to increase the minimum wage, as well as the back-to-school-benefit allocated to low income families each September.
He also plans to hire 60,000 additional schoolteachers (at a cost of 2 billion Euros) and restore the retirement age to 60 (from the current 62, following the 2010 Sarkozy reform) for those who joined the labor force at age 18.
At the same time however, he has vowed to pursue a strict and disciplined budgetary policy, in order to reach a balanced budget by 2017, the end of his term. Incidentally, France has not had a balanced budget since 1975...
Yet, Mr. Hollande believes that austerity alone cannot bring about the coveted policy goals of balanced budgets and reduced debt levels.
Only economic growth can allow such objectives to be reached, he argues.
Hence, on the day of his inauguration, Tuesday May 15, he plans to fly to Berlin and meet with Angela Merkel, the German chancellor (who had supported Sarkozy during the French presidential campaign), in order to renegotiate the European Union Fiscal Pact, devised by Merkel and Sarkozy last fall, and that was signed by 25 of the 27 members of the European Union. Only Britain and the Czech Republic declined to do so.
The pact institutionalizes budgetary discipline. Each nation agreed to incorporate into its constitution the Golden Rule, which compels the government to introduce only balanced budgets, hence putting an end to deficit financing, a practice long abused in Europe and that has led to its current predicament.
During his campaign, Mr. Hollande, who is opposed to the Golden Rule, demanded that the pact be renegotiated. Germany resisted such calls, leading Mr. Hollande to insist that Germany should not decide for all of Europe.
Mrs. Merkel however, has refused to budge on the issue. The fiscal pact is not negotiable, she reminded Mr. Hollande this week.
The Germans fear that Mr. Hollande’s Growth pact, which he wants to incorporate in the initial agreement, will lead Europe back to square one: more deficits and debt.
Germany is not here to finance French election promises, Volker Kauder, the parliamentary leader of Merkel’s party, the Christian Democrats, emphasized.
Merkel believes that economic growth can and should be stimulated by structural reforms such as the liberalization of the labor market; increasing the retirement age and eliminating barriers to trade, for instance.
Many outside France believe that its economy would greatly benefit from the implementation of such policies, but the newly elected French president and his supporters have long been adamantly against such measures…
Since Merkel will not budge on the fiscal pact, Hollande may propose an addendum instead, containing the following more consensual  measures: a more prominent role for the European Investment Bank; the issuing of European bonds to finance infrastructure projects in Europe; a tax on financial transactions to raise revenue and the more efficient utilization of European structural funds designed to help Europe’s poorer regions.
Though such measures could be helpful, their actual economic impact could take years to measure.
They should prove more palatable to Mrs. Merkel however,  provided the original fiscal pact remains intact.
France and Mr. Hollande are thus in a very precarious position.
According to figures released by the European Commission on Friday, the French economy is expected to grow by 1.3% next year (and not the 1.7% predicted by Mr. Hollande and on which his economic program is based).
In addition, the budget deficit should reach 4.2% (if no additional measures are taken) and not 3% as the outgoing government had planned, an objective Mr. Hollande has pledged to pursue.
Before the revised predictions issued by the Commission, France needed to cut 20 billion Euros in spending per year simply to reach its deficit targets…
As a result, significant cuts in France’s budget are inevitable…
Our economy is weak even though we have yet to experience rigorous budgetary discipline. This is very worrisome, Mathieu Plane, an economist, told the French business weekly L’Expansion.
Yet steep budget cuts will necessarily lead to higher unemployment, thus higher budget deficits, and a lower growth rate, if not outright recession. The Greek debacle is a case in point.
Such plans are anathema to a French socialist…
Moreover, Hollande has not outlined any measures to reduce the budget, on the contrary.
He plans to limit its growth to 1% per year, albeit lower than the inflation rate.
He never explained however, what cuts he would consider making, if any, in the state budget, and thus whom they would affect…
Mr. Hollande is keenly aware that France’s budget deficit is deteriorating, and he has asked France’s Cour des Comptes, its public-accounts office, to evaluate the extent of the deficit. Its report is due late June, conveniently after France’s parliamentary elections. President-elect Hollande hopes to win a comfortable majority in the National Assembly, one that will support his economic program.
Hence, no potentially unpopular measures will be taken before July.
Mr. Hollande has said that he will respond appropriately once he has studied the report.
What is clear is the following: he cannot reach his numbers (deficit reduction targets) by tax increases alone. He will have to do more to cut spending, Guillaume Menuet, a Citigroup economist, told The Economist.
France needs to borrow 180 billion Euros in 2012, and 240 in 2013.
If Hollande’s economic program is deemed not sufficiently robust and credible by the financial markets to tackle the budget deficit and debt issues, then yields on France’s sovereign bonds will rise, thereby deepening France’s budget woes.
Mr. Hollande has thus very little room to maneuver. He needs to confront France’s budget deficit and growing debt (90% of GDP by the end of 2012) head on, and as early as Tuesday.
The corrective measures that need to be taken, significant budget cuts; tax increases, and not only for millionaires, as well as structural reforms will no doubt alienate many of those who voted for Hollande and against Sarkozy and the recession last week, and who took his campaign slogan, le changement c’est maintenant (change begins now), seriously.
The German newspaper Die Welt made the following assessment of France’s predicament earlier this week.
The saying that nothing happens in Europe without France is accurate. But what can be achieved with a France that psychologically represses the consequences of globalization, toys with the idea of a fundamentally different monetary policy and considers austerity to be a Teutonic vice?
This is the France that Hollande has inherited, and it will be his responsibility to provide an answer to that pertinent question.
Is he up to the task?
Does he even want to reconcile France with globalization and its demands?
If so, will he do what it takes to revitalize the French economy, and render it more competitive, even if that entails betraying his leftwing supporters for whom globalization is not an opportunity, but an abomination?
Will he, instead, tread the easier path and simply tinker with a social model that is bankrupt, but can probably be propped up a few more years, until the next Presidential election?
In 1996, Alain Juppé, Sarkozy’s foreign minister, but then Jacques Chirac’s prime minister said the following:
The French are a conservative and reticent people, who cling to their privileges and prejudices, and are paralyzed by their past.
The assessment, blunt and not particularly flattering, may be even more accurate fifteen years later, four years into the gravest economic crisis since the Great Depression.
There is only one possible remedy in such a context, it is called leadership, and there is no such thing as leadership without courage.
If Hollande is to succeed and steer France away from the clutches of bankruptcy, he will have to ignore the program on which he ran; unequivocally tell the country the state in which it finds itself; what must be done and done now to resurrect its economy and the sacrifices that endeavor will entail.
That is what a leader would do, whatever the potential political and electoral consequences may be.
In the end, Hollande will be judged on what personal sacrifices he was willing to make in order to prevent his country form following Greece and now Spain into the abyss…
(the phograph above is by Thomas Samson/AFP PHOTO)










 

«This is a revolution of ideals and principles»

Having more pressing business elsewhere, the Syrian army deserted the area last December.
Left to its own devices, the Free Syrian Army hoped that the province of Idlib would become the Syrian Benghazi, an opposition bastion from which to launch the military campaign that would liberate all of Syria.
The fall of Baba Amr after four weeks of sustained shelling, which the civilized world did nothing to prevent, stunned and dismayed many activists in the area.
That the Syrian army would now focus on Idlib seemed obvious to many.
We are expecting something like Baba Amr, an activist in Idlib told AP, as the shelling began last weekend.
The Free Syrian Army also knew that it would fare no better than its Baba Amr colleagues against the Syrian army, and for the same reasons.
We have no weapons-we have nothing to fight the Syrian army, a senior FSA commander told Anita McNaught of Aljazeera.
The FSA cannot effectively retaliate without RPGs and shoulder-launched missiles necessary to target Assad’s tanks and helicopters…
Foreign supporters of the Syrian opposition have provided next to nothing.
The weaponry coming from Iraq is old and inefficient.
On the black-market, a Kalashnikov goes for $1,300. Bullets cost $3 a piece, rates the FSA cannot afford.
Consequently, the FSA is an army devoid of weapons…
After four days of shelling, Idlib fell yesterday.
The Syrian army moved in and regained control of the city and its surroundings.
Since last night there has been no more fighting. The Free Syrian Army has withdrawn and regime forces have stormed the entire city and are carrying out house-to-house searches, Noureddin al-Abdo, a Syrian activist exiled in Beirut told AFP.
The Syrian army, according to a local activist, targeted residents trying to flee the city.
More than 20 people were killed and their bodies discarded in the al-Bilal mosque, he told Reuters.
The news agency also reported that FSA fighters had killed 10 regular army soldiers in an ambush in the Idlib region.
To prevent waves of residents of Homs and Idlib from seeking refuge in neighboring countries (as 30,000 Syrians have already done), the Assad regime last month planted thousands of Russian-made PMN-2 pressure mines along the border with Turkey.
Those fleeing their besieged homes (200,000)  have therefore, nowhere to go.
That seems to be the price to pay for those suspected of supporting the opposition and the FSA.
At a UN Human Rights Council meeting held in Geneva earlier this week, Paulo Pinheiro, Chairperson of the Commission of Inquiry on Syria, denounced what UN investigators have called collective punishment of civilians in Syria.
We are referring to indiscriminate bombardment of cities. Mortars sent on residents’ houses because they are under suspicion they collaborate with armed groups, the opposition. In that sense, we use the term collective punishment, Pinheiro said.
Assad’s assault on the Syrian people has killed 8,500, including more than 500 children…
In a report issued today, Amnesty International explained that the scale of torture and other ill-treatment in Syria has risen to a level not witnessed for years and is reminiscent of the dark era of the 1970s and 1980s…
The testimony presented in this report, taken in the context of other human rights violations committed against civilians in Syria, is yet further evidence that torture and other ill-treatment in Syria form part of a widespread and systematic attack against the civilian population, carried out in an organized manner and as part of state policy and therefore amount to crimes against humanity, Amnesty International declared, according to Reuters.
Ann Harrison, of Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa program, likened the experience of Syrian civilian victims to that of detainees under former president Hafez al-Assad-a nightmarish world of systematic torture.
Not surprisingly hence, Syrian opposition activists reported that a massacre of civilians had taken place in the Karm el-Zeytoun neighborhood of Homs this Sunday.
The bodies of 47 residents including women and children were found, some with their throats cut.
We were arrested by the army, then handed over to the shabiha. They poured fuel over us. They shot us-30 or 40 persons, a victim who managed to escape said, in a video posted on YouTube.
The shabiha (from the Arabic word for ghost) are militias composed of thugs armed and financed by the Assad regime.
Some of the children had been hit with blunt objects on their heads, one little girl was mutilated and some women were raped before being killed, Hadi Abdallah, a Homs activist, told AFP.
The regime denied it was responsible for the massacre and blamed terrorist armed groups instead.
It is in this context that Assad issued a decree yesterday scheduling parliamentary elections for May 7.
A free and fair election organized by a regime accused of committing crimes against humanity and that has arrested, tortured and killed thousands of its own people?
Parliamentary elections for a rubber-stamp parliament in the middle of the kind of violence we’re seeing across the country-it’s ridiculous, Victoria Nuland, US State Department spokeswomen said in Washington yesterday.
So the war against the Syrian people grinds on.
Assad can sleep soundly for now. His Russian patrons are not about to abandon him, yet.
We have specialists in Syria and we cooperate militarily with Syria. This is not a secret. We have a good, solid, military and technical cooperation with Syria. And today, we don’t have a basis to reconsider this military cooperation, Anatoly Antonov, Russian deputy defense minister told journalists in Moscow earlier this week.
Opposition activists cannot boast of similar support.
We are alone. We face this alone. No one is helping us, a FSA commander lamented.
These revolutionaries do not need nor desire a foreign military intervention.
They merely request the means to defend themselves against a brutal regime bountifully armed by Moscow.
We can do this revolution on our own-we don’t need the West to fight it for us, but we can’t do it without weapons, a young fighter told Aljazeera’s Anita McNaught.
In any case, though dismayed by the civilized world’s unwillingness to help them in any significant fashion, opponents of Assad are not about to relent.
We prefer death to more humiliation. We don’t want bread and fuel, although we need them. This is a revolution of ideals and principles. It’s a revolution of human beings who have been deprived of their humanity. We tasted freedom and we can’t go back again, an activist told Anita McNaught.
The Assad regime is doomed precisely because it will never succeed in annihilating those ideals and principles.
Only one relevant questions remains to be posed:
How many more Syrians will have to die before the civilized world finally steps in to help the Syrians remove Assad?
(the photograph above of a woman recovering from her wounds following the shelling of her house in Idlib last Saturday which killed her husband and two of her children is by Rodrigo Abd/AP Photo)

What has Assad done to the residents of Baba Amr?

Valerie Amos, the UN under secretary general for humanitarian affairs, was finally authorized by the Syrian government to enter Baba Amr on Thursday.
This Homs neighborhood was shelled continuously by the Assad regime's armed forces for four weeks.
At least 950 craters are visible on open lands, such as roads and farmland, from the impact of indirect fire weapons. The number of craters indicates the frequency of attacks and how many artillery and mortar shells have fallen. There are 640 buildings in the neighborhood with visible damage. However, the damage to buildings is likely to be significantly underestimated from viewing the satellite image because views from satellite images do not show hits to the sides of buildings made by explosive weapons, Human Rights Watch said after having examined a satellite photo of Baba Amr taken on February 25, five days before the shelling stopped.
I was horrified by the destruction I saw. Almost all the buildings had been destroyed and there were hardly any people there. I am extremely concerned as to the whereabouts of the people who have been displaced, Ms. Amos wrote in a statement released on Friday.
The authorities have not provided any information concerning the fate of Baba Amr’s residents.
Did they flee; were they victims of mass arrests, or killed? We do not know...
Ms. Amos has asked for unrestricted access to all areas subjected to violence in Syria, but has yet to receive an official response from the Assad government…
According to the BBC, activist groups continue to report the summary execution of men in Baba Amr, the butchering of entire families, and the systematic mass rape of women.
Outside of Homs, scores of civilians were killed in what was described as a new massacre by opposition activists.  Forty-four of them reportedly belonged to just two families…
A similar massacre was reported near Idlib, when troops opened fire, killing some twenty civilians.
The regime blames the violence on what it calls armed terrorist gangs.
Tanks also targeted the Homs neighborhood of Karam al-Zeitoun.
Thirty tanks entered my neighborhood at seven this morning and they are using their cannons to fire on houses, Karam Abu Rabea, a resident of the neighborhood, told Aljazeera.
Although the uprising began one year, the regime is remaining steadfast, according to senior US intelligence officials quoted in the WP, and Assad is very much in charge.
The Alawite establishment that governs the country has remained unified and determined not to relinquish power.
With so much blood having been shed by its security apparatus, it has no other option but to fight to the finish.
Were Assad to cede power, then he and his inner circle would no doubt face war crimes charges…
Hence, the uprising launched by the pro-democracy movement will be a long and bloody one, no doubt.
That leadership is going to fight very hard. The odds are against them, but they are going to fight very hard, one US intelligence official told the WP.
Meanwhile, the special envoy of the UN and the Arab League, Kofi Annan, will be in Damascus today to try and find a political solution to the Syrian crisis.
We will be urging the government and a broad spectrum of Syrian opposition to come together to work with us to find a solution that will respect the aspirations of the Syrian people, Annan said yesterday in Cairo.
The Syrian opposition did not look favorably upon this initiative, however.
It feels like we are watching the same movie being repeated over and over again.
My fear is, like other international envoys before him, the aim is to waste a month or two of pointless mediation efforts, Burhan Ghalioun, head of the Syrian National Council, told AP yesterday.
Indeed, while Mr. Annan negotiates with Assad, the latter’s forces will continue killing men, women and children…
(the satellite photo of Baba Amr was found here)