Tag Archives: lebanon

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the road to de-mask-us

The revolution sweeping across the Middle East started in Beirut shortly after the February 14, 2005, assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri and 22 others.  The ensuing Cedar Revolution, launched by Lebanese pro-democracy supporters, targeted Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s brutal regime and demanded an end to Syria’s 30 year occupation of Lebanon.  The Lebanese revolution succeeded in ousting Assad’s military and intelligence officials from Lebanon and driving them back into Syria by the end of April 2005.  It was an incredible moment celebrated by pro-democracy supporters throughout Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt and ignited the reform efforts we see in Syria today.  The United States, too, celebrated the expulsion of Assad’s militiamen because of the message it sent not only to Syria but Iran.

Syria’s defeat in 2005 was a moment of opportunity for the U.S. and our allies that has since been squandered.  The U.S. government’s efforts to build on the Cedar Revolutions’ successes faded over the years and altogether stopped with the election of President Barack Obama.  Today, Syria and Hezbollah are in control of Lebanon again with Iran calling the shots. 

But the Syrian uprisings of the last week give Obama another rare opportunity to push for greater democracy in Syria and send a powerful message to Iran that it could be next.  He should seize the moment quickly.

In 2009, after a year of ignoring the signs of Syrian and Iranian growing influence, President Obama naively ordered the return of the U.S. Ambassador to Syria after a six-year hiatus – a punishment for bad behavior.  Obama’s diplomatic gift and peace offering gave the brutal regime — controlled by Hezbollah, Damascus and Tehran — the instant credibility it desired. 

Nothing has been gained by Obama’s concession to Assad and much has been lost.  As moderate regimes throughout the Arab world begin to fall, the most repressive Arab governments are reaping the benefits of weaker neighbors and moving to take more ground.  The Obama Administration meanwhile struggles to understand who our friends and enemies are.  It was more aggressive with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak than with the much more repressive Bashar al-Assad.  The inconsistent Obama strategy has been called “selective” by the U.S. media and hypocritical and foolish by the Arab street. 

Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton seem to not be able to do diplomacy and chew gum.  The Administration has struggled to find a coherent policy and failed to articulate its goals.  When Yemen and Bahrain launched bloody attacks on peaceful protesters, the U.S. botched an opportunity to stand firm on our values against an ally’s repressive actions.  Instead, Clinton defaulted to the tried and true talking point about our interests and how helpful those governments have historically been to our military and the support they have given to our anti-terrorism efforts. 

But why not push our friends toward reform and our enemies toward regime change?  White House and State Department officials should be able to have adult conversations with our allies that include multi-faceted approaches to the policies we disagree with.  Certainly U.S. allies that receive vast amounts of US taxpayer dollars are able to accept our aid but stand strongly against some of our policies (Pakistan comes to mind).

For Obama, chastising brutal regimes has proven to be much harder than calling out House Republicans.  Syrian President Assad, for instance, has consistently supported Hezbollah and Hamas at Iran’s asking with little consequence from Obama and Clinton.  If we want to pressure Iran to give up its illegal pursuit of nuclear weapons then we better find enough resolve to support the overthrow of Iran’s closest ally, Syria.

Over the last month, hundreds of protesters have turned into thousands and then tens of thousands of voices throughout Syria calling for more freedoms and an end to Assad’s reign.  What started in Dara’a as a student protest has morphed into tens of thousands in Damascus demanding democratic reforms.  A simple look at Twitter shows incredible enthusiasm from Arab youth and democracy supporters for ending Assad’s government.   

While much as been written by the U.S. media that the intelligence community didn’t connect the dots in the lead up to Sept. 11, very little has been said of the State Department’s failure to recognize the intensity of Arab reform efforts.  Clinton missed the changes afoot in Syria even after opening up a new Embassy in Damascus last year, and she has chosen to stay behind the region’s news by stating the obvious and usually waiting to speak for two or three days after most everyone knows what has developed.  Clinton’s me-too message of greater political participation for women in the Arab world seems like stale and recycled talking points from former First Lady Laura Bush’s and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s efforts.  And there have been longer readouts for journalists on the president’s NCAA tournament picks than for his meetings on Libya or Syria.

The U.S. mainstream media’s protection of Clinton’s slow response peaked with Anna Wintour’s Vogue Magazine profile of Bashar al-Assad’s wife, Asma, last month.  While Syrian democracy reformers organized, an embarrassingly naïve and apologetic piece about the Syrian first lady by writer Joan Juliet Buck was released weeks before the Assads’ government started killing protesters.  To be sure, Vogue would have never produced such a ridiculous piece if its’ it-girl Hillary Clinton, instead of calling Assad a “reformer,” had been speaking out more forcefully against a regime that has supported the killing of Americans.  Buck’s piece has since been used by Arab bloggers to show the arrogance of the Syrian regime and the cluelessness of the U.S. media.

Obama now has a rare historical chance to make progress on U.S. interests and values by speaking clearly and forcefully against a brutal regime that has worked against American policy in Iraq, Iran, Israel and Lebanon.  If the president squanders that opportunity, it would be fair to conclude that the Obama Administration is strategically uninterested in changing Syrian and Iranian behavior. 

Now is not the time to back off supporting the Arab street and its march towards greater democracy and free markets.  Syria could be next; and the protesters need to know that President Obama stands with them in toppling their leader.  This isn’t a call for use of U.S. military force but it is a call to de-mask Damascus and speak out for U.S. interests at the same time.

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desperately seeking syria at lebanon’s expense

It has been almost six years since a brutal bombing in Beirut killed Lebanon’s Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri and 22 others on Valentine’s Day 2005.  This week, the UN prosecutor overseeing the investigation finally submitted sealed indictments to the criminal court’s pre-trial judge as to who was responsible for the bombing.  UN investigators and foreign intelligence over the last several years, however, have consistently pointed to senior Syrian and Iranian officials’ involvement.  While the names of the indicted individuals are not expected to be known for eight weeks, the Obama Administration has known for quite some time that senior Syrian and Iranian officials are to blame for the brutal killings. 

That is why it is puzzling that while the long-awaited indictments were being prepared last month, President Barack Obama naively ordered the return of the U.S. Ambassador to Syria after a six-year hiatus.  Obama’s premature move gave Hezbollah, Damascus and Tehran the instant credibility they had been looking for to characterize the coming indictments as political rather than criminal. 

Administration officials have ignored Lebanon’s developing crisis from the moment they took office by consistently siding with Syria.  Last week, administration officials leaked that President Obama has now given French President Nicholas Sarkozy the lead in dealing with Lebanon and the indictments for the international community.  The move washes Obama’s hands of Lebanon’s problems and gives France control.  The outsourced foreign policy couldn’t be more pleasing to Syria and Iran.

The Obama team has been remarkably disinterested in the history of the special tribunal that has investigated the bombing and the drama it’s produced throughout Lebanon and the region.  The Bush Administration’s strong response to the Hariri killings helped galvanize international support for the removal of Syrian troops from Lebanon after 29 years.  Since then, without much U.S. attention to the problem, intelligence has shown that Hezbollah, a designated terrorist group, has worked with Syria, Iran and some Lebanese officials to ensure that Hariri’s killer is never brought to justice by declaring the tribunal’s rulings illegitimate.  Even U.S. ally Turkey is helping the Syrians fight the indictments with no protest from the White House. 

Secretary of State Hilary Clinton’s softer tone with Syria last week signaled the administration’s willingness to start fresh with Syria and forget its brutal past.  When pressed about Syria’s role in the bombings, Clinton said, “We don’t think it is, at this moment, useful to be pointing fingers or blaming or going about the business of recriminations about what did or didn’t happen and who did or did not do what.”  In other words: We are going to forgive Hezbollah, Syria and Iran for killing 23 people and hit the reset button on our relationship.  It was a remarkable statement from a U.S. Secretary of State about a country with known ties to terrorists. 

Irrefutable evidence compiled over the last six years proves that top officials in Iran, Syria and Hezbollah conspired to kill Hariri and the 22 others in order to gain greater control over Lebanon’s future.  And although the initial UN probe in 2005 accused four pro-Syrian Lebanese generals of taking orders from neighboring Syria and Iran while working for the Lebanese military, the four were held for roughly four years but, sadly, never charged and eventually released.  Since then, Syria has been desperate to close the case and have the U.S. ambassador return to Damascus in an attempt to show the world that its hands were clean all along.  The Obama team should have waited for the UN tribunal’s work to finish before giving Syria such an enormous gift.  Especially since the indictments were only a month away.  Having the U.S. Ambassador sent back to Syria before the tribunal’s indictments were announced was a gift even the Syrians couldn’t have imagined.

After months of ignoring Lebanon’s growing regional problems, the Obama Administration now faces a Lebanon with no leader and under the control of Hezbollah.  The Obama team must now justify Syria’s continued support for Hezbollah and Hamas and its hatred for Israel.  Having created some of the circumstances that brought him to power, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, the armed Shia group’s defiant leader, is now squarely President Obama’s problem.  And what will Obama do when the indictments are unsealed and we find that senior Syrian officials are accused of killing Lebanon’s prime minister?  With the U.S. Ambassador already sitting in Damascus, little incentive remains for Syria’s cooperation.

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the obama team at the UN is weak

U.S. Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice has been on the job for 18 months now, but she doesn’t have much to show for it. Her record of accomplishments and performance on behalf of the American people is embarrassing. While Rice has been active in the social scene of Washington and The White House, a study released by the uber-serious non-profit group Security Council Report suggests that the past year has been the most inactive Security Council since 1991. Rice missed crucial negotiations on Iran’s continued enrichment of uranium, she failed to speak out when Iran was elected to the Commission on the Status of Women and three other UN Committees, she failed to call-out Libya when they were elected to the UN’s Human Rights Council, she recently delivered an Iran sanctions resolution with the least support Iran resolutions have ever had and she called her one and only press conference with the UN Secretary General on the issue of texting while driving. For an Administration that promised to utilize the UN and improve our reputation around the world, its dinner party circuit strategy isn’t making America more secure.

Much of the blame for the weakness belongs to Rice and her habitual silence. Rice has not conducted the hard negotiations nor done the sometimes unpopular work of engaging the UN on the United States’ priority issues. When Rice does attend UN negotiations, she is all too willing to avoid confrontation. While other foreign Ambassadors speak fondly of Rice and the Obama Administration’s easy ways, they have been weak negotiators for the American people.

This lack of American leadership at the UN has resulted in the general Security Council inactivity spotlighted in the study by the Columbia University-affiliated group – Security Council Report.

The Report says:

“In 2009 the total number of Council decisions (resolutions and presidential statements) decreased by 26 percent from 2008. The number dropped from 113 to 83, the lowest level since 1991.

Resolutions dropped from 65 to 48 and presidential statements from 48 to 35.

This significant trend is also mirrored in a matching reduction in formal Council activity. The number of formal Council meetings decreased by 20 percent, from 243 to 194.

The number of press statements, which is one indicator of Council decision making at the informal level, also decreased by 23 percent, from 47 to 36.”

While Rice launched her tenure at the UN with a glamour spread in Vogue Magazine by famed photographer Annie Leibovitz showing her kicking back in an empty Security Council Chamber, she seems to not enjoy the Chamber when it’s full of diplomats. During the Haiti crisis, Rice was not only absent from the Security Council vote to expand the UN’s peacekeeping operation, but she also failed to call an emergency meeting in the immediate aftermath to request more help. In fact, 7 days after the Haiti earthquake left tens of thousands of people in the streets without food or shelter, it was UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon that came to the Security Council to request more troops – the American Ambassador hadn’t bothered.

Earlier this summer, the UN Security Council held an emergency meeting on Israel’s raid of a ship headed to Gaza — and the United States was represented by the deputy at the US Mission. Reporters, UN members and activists were mystified as to why Susan Rice was a no-show during the roughly 12-hour negotiations which left Israel fending off global criticism without the top American diplomat to help. The UN Security Council ultimately issued a statement on the situation in the early morning hours of Tuesday, June 1, after starting deliberations on Monday, May 31 – the American Memorial Day holiday. Rice never showed up for any of the meetings. Coming on the heels of Rice’s silence and absence from the meeting where Iran was elected to the UN Women’s committee and Rice’s refusal to call out Libya after it was elected to the UN’s Human Rights Council, Rice’s performance is leaving Americans wondering if she really wants to be the American Ambassador to the UN.

More than 30 human rights organizations appealed to Rice before the crucial Human Rights Council membership vote in an effort to get her to find another country to run against Libya. The activists pleaded, “This contravenes the 2006 promise that the reformed Council would bring competitive elections, and sets a poor example.” The groups urged Rice to do something. But Rice ignored the human rights leaders’ appeal and didn’t try to make a competitive race for Libya. Rice didn’t speak up to highlight the problem, didn’t try to find another candidate and couldn’t utter Libya’s name to condemn Libya’s successful election after the vote.

Rice‘s avoidance of tough negotiations on matters important to America is unfortunate, but her lack of engagement on UN budget reform is shameful. U.S. citizens pay 22% of the UN’s regular budget, 26% of the UN Peacekeeping Budget and give millions more in voluntary contributions to a plethora of other UN programs. They deserve an ambassador who doesn’t duck a messy public fight with other countries looking to spend American taxpayers’ dollars.

But perhaps the Rice’s most astonishing failure was that she only was able to get 12 of the 15 countries on the United Nations Security Council to vote for increased sanctions on the Islamic Republic’s illegal pursuit of nuclear weapons. On Fox News Sunday, Rice jumped to defend the Obama Administration’s lackluster performance by claiming that Iran resolutions were not unanimous during the Bush Administration and that there were “abstentions”.

Her strategy to minimize the Bush team’s performance in order to make her own poor performance look better isn’t factual. The vote was the first Iran resolution for the Obama team but not the first time the Security Council pressured the government of Iran to suspend all nuclear enrichment-related and reprocessing activity. President George W. Bush and his team wrote, negotiated and forced a vote of the 15 nations that sit on the Council a total of five times. Three Iran resolutions under Bush passed unanimously. Two other resolutions passed with only one country voting against sanctions and one country abstaining (singular abstention, not plural as Rice claimed).

After so much hype about President Barack Obama’s foreign policy engagement strategy, the UN resolution was remarkably weak, took too long to get and received less support than Bush’s team’s. Bush lost two countries’ support in five Iran resolutions; Obama’s team led by Rice lost three countries’ support in one resolution. It’s ironic that the Obama team labeled the Bush team devoid of friends around the world. Obama’s foreign policy weakness and acquiescence has made him an international celebrity guest, but it isn’t producing the promised results on U.S. foreign policy priorities. The Obama team’s poor performance calls into question its overly diplomatic strategy to lead the world through excessive talk.

Rice has gambled this past year that keeping America unengaged at the UN is the best way to keep the Obama Administration, and herself, popular with other countries. But while the newly released report suggests that the Security Council has been cordial and pleasant in 2009, the number of crisis situations, international conflicts and peacekeeping operations haven’t decreased. No meaningful improvement has been seen to the international issues monitored by the Security Council; in fact, the study suggests that some situations have gotten worse. Without American leadership at the UN, countries just continue to talk and socialize at the U.S. taxpayer’s expense.

The facts show that the Bush style that Obama routinely ridiculed and derided produced better results than his exaggerated diplomacy has achieved. If you are comfortable living in a world where America has no more influence than China, then you may like Obama’s softer, quieter, weaker America. Iran certainly loves the breathing room they got from Rice waiting 17 months before increasing the pressure on their illegal nuclear weapons program. And allies like Turkey, Brazil and Lebanon now find it easy to ignore Obama. It isn’t popular to say, but the world needs a strong America. The world needs an America that leads our allies and isn’t troubled by certain charges of hubris from elites on the Upper East Side of New York City or in capitals around the world. One thing is clear – Obama’s easy professorial attitude isn’t winning us votes.

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robert gibbs misled on meet the press

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs is a campaign style spokesman who thrives on political spin. But after almost 18 months of acting as the official White House Spokesman, he shouldn’t be allowed to spin foreign policy facts on Meet the Press without pushback from David Gregory or other journalists. On Sunday, Gibbs tried to spin the Obama Administration’s policies on Iran and North Korea by misrepresenting the facts about the support the Obama team got at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC).

Gibbs either doesn’t understand what happened at the UN or he is lying. Gibbs repeatedly referred to “bringing everyone to the table” to support “the strongest sanctions” the UN has ever placed on North Korea and Iran. He also said that the Bush Administration didn’t have the support of Russia and China on their sanctions resolutions in “September or October 2008” and that the Obama Administration has “better relationships with countries” and “improved relationships….that make our Country safer.” But the facts show that Gibbs is wrong.

Gibbs should know that the Obama team, lead by UN Ambassador Susan Rice, failed to get a unanimous vote on the first and only Iran sanctions resolution this administration has authored. In fact, the Obama team failed to get the support of Lebanon, Turkey and Brazil. Of the 15 members of the Security Council, Rice and the Obama team only received 12 votes – the least amount of support we have ever seen for a UNSC sanctions resolution on Iran. While Gibbs claims that everyone is at the table, the Obama table has more empty seats than the Bush table had. Despite what Gibbs tries to spin, the Bush team got fewer NO votes in 5 resolutions on Iran than the Obama team got on their one and only resolution.

Additionally, Gibbs needs to go back and look at the Security Council roll call vote and video footage from UN resolution #1835 that passed on September 27, 2008. While Gibbs claims on Sunday’s Meet the Press that Russia’s and China’s support was unclear, they both clearly raised their hand to vote in favor of the resolution. That resolution, which called on Iran to “comply fully and without delay” with SC demands and IAEA directives, was written, negotiated and forced to a unanimous vote 7 days after the IAEA issued their then-latest report on Iran’s illegal uranium enrichment. Gibbs’ claim that we didn’t know where Russia and China stood is laughable when you can actually watch the video showing the Chinese and Russian diplomats with their hands in the air.

But Gibbs is not the only Administration official to spread misinformation about the Bush team’s record at the UN. Shortly after the June 9, 2010 SC vote on Iran sanctions where the Obama team got only 12 votes in favor of the resolution, UN Ambassador Susan Rice also tried to distract attention from her poor performance by misleading Fox News Sunday viewers about the Bush team’s vote count. Rice jumped to defend the Obama Administration’s lackluster performance by claiming that previous Iran resolutions were not unanimous during the Bush Administration and that there were “abstentions”. Her strategy to minimize the Bush team’s performance in order to make her own meager results look better isn’t factual. It was, in fact, one of three Iran resolutions the Bush team got passed unanimously. Two other resolutions passed with only one country voting against sanctions and one country abstaining (singular abstention, not plural as Rice claimed). Not a bad accomplishment for a team that the Obama Administration labeled devoid of friends around the world.

Gibbs’ claims of better relationships with other countries also seem suspect if those friends don’t actually support us on priority issues. The Obama team consistently confuses kind words with actual commitments and votes. While some countries clearly like the softer stance from the Obama Administration, they also aren’t being convinced to support us. The Obama team waited 17 months before they brought forward a UN resolution pressuring Iran with additional sanctions. In that time, the Iranians made unfettered progress toward a nuclear weapon with less pressure and inquiry from an international community celebrating the fact that they weren’t being confronted by the U.S. with the Iran question.

Gibbs’ performance on Meet the Press suggests that he either consciously misled viewers on the Administration’s UN performance or he isn’t paying attention to Susan Rice’s performance. Either way, the White House press corps should challenge his statements and make him correct the record.

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