Syria: The carousel of dialogue

A Syrian reformist explains what is wrong with US policy, and how the Assad regime uses US democracy for its own ends.

The Carousel of Dialogue

Washington DC, June 24, 2007/RPS Opinion - Farid Ghadry/ -- There is something quite unique about western democracies and Middle Eastern autocracies. One rotates its leaders every few years to energize and advance the cause of change and the other continues its tradition of sustaining aging fixtures beholden to ideologies and eras long deemed unfit. In the case of Syria, the whole country is held hostage to the whim of a violent and unwise man scurrying to imitate a father whose own past has condemned Syria to a meaningless history.

Although democracies in the western world are a source of glory to its people, in certain instances, it has been a source of misery to ours. As new western leaders are elected to lead their nations, invariably they all start with a clean slate including the one that opens new channels with dictatorships in the hope of making a difference. Every western leader believes he or she can do better with the likes of Assad and Ahmadinajead and attempts to bolster their image of statesmanship by making the pilgrimage to Damascus or Tehran in the hope of striking a peaceful deal that would immortalize him/her forever.

In Damascus, this carousel of dialogue serves the system well because it can bolster its own image all the while making a mockery of the good intended western leaders. It takes few years before these leaders realize that Assad and Ahmadinajead are not people who eye diplomacy as a solution but rather as a trap to buy more time or to delay for just another western leader to take over and to repeat the same mistakes. The unfortunate truth about this reality is that while leaders of the world are doing what is in the best interests of their nations, the Syrian and the Iranian peoples simply continue suffering at the expense of their learning curve.

Then we have leaders who know that it is impossible to open a meaningful dialogue with Syria and Iran but continue calling for such dialogue while standing on the sidelines. Failures of such talks will not be debited from their own political credit as they are not at risk of causing these failures themselves. Characteristically of those "sideline leaders" is the notion of vision they embark on adopting while leaving someone else's to pick the political losses of another spin of the carousel of dialogue.

Violent dictators will always be violent no matter how well intentioned western leaders are. Assuming that a meaningful exchange can take place between two statesmen under which a framework of a real diplomatic mission can produce real results is a faulty assumption. People like Assad and Ahmadinajead are real thugs in the real sense of the word and for anyone to assume that these two violent leaders can be either peeled from each other or can be trusted to act with civility are doing so at their own peril and that of their people.

When Abe Suleiman, Assad's backchannels envoy, traveled to Israel in April of 2007, he visited with the families of the Israeli soldiers kidnapped by Hezbollah. Think about this. Assad instigates Hezbollah to attack Israel in the summer of 2006 that netted 8 Israeli soldiers killed and the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers then he sends an envoy to pay respect to the families of the kidnapped soldiers. This is the sick mind you are dealing with and the Syrian people have been suffering from over the last seven years and counting.

The biggest blunder of US diplomacy vis-à-vis Syria took place when someone at the US State Department decided, and publicly supported, the claim that "regime change" in Syria is not the objective but rather "behavior change" is. If someone wanted to send a message of more violence to Assad, they could not have done a better job. Removing "regime change" off the table produced a more intransigent Assad and helped to create a bigger monster. Use of force should never, ever be off the table against rogue and violent regimes. It is the only matter that scares them and against which they will assess and measure their own violent streak. It behooves the US State Department, if it really wants behavioral change, to reassess its policy about Syria in light of the failure of what the goodwill signal called "behavior change" did to change Assad.

Unless a policy change about Syria is seriously considered and adopted by this administration, Lebanon will be lost to the forces of evil, Israel will suffer slowly as it fights Hamas and defends itself against more rockets emanating from Lebanon and Gaza by Syrian-induced instigations, and Iraq will continue on its path of vacillating and on the brink of a total civil collapse. If the Bush administration ever has any chance of saving the vision of freedom and human rights so eloquently laid down by President Bush in the Prague Conference of June 2007, it must not shy away from the toughest decisions during the toughest of times.  

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