Syria

A Positive Story From Syria

Samuel Hooper1 Comment

A brief but welcome glimmer of light in the darkness that is today’s Syria – a grieving father is reunited with the son that he believed had been killed in an attack by pro-regime forces.

 

Max Fisher, writing at The Washington Post, breaks the story for a western audience, and gives this context:

The man who first appears when the video opens isn’t the father – he’s someone else, perhaps another relative. It’s not until a minute in that the boy’s father appears, his face twisted in joy, running out of the house to see his son.

Even if you don’t speak a word of Arabic, the family’s body language says everything. There is a lot of crying and hugging and grateful recitations of the Takbir (“Allahu akbar!” or “God is great!”).

I am still collecting my thoughts on the latest developments in Syria – the irrefutable use of chemical weapons by regime forces or others loyal to Assad, and the seemingly inevitable military response from the west.

Barring the unveiling of some hitherto-unseen wise and strategic foreign policy or diplomatic initiatives from Barack Obama and David Cameron (neither of whom have stellar track records in this area), I am convinced that nothing good can come of any of this. I genuinely don’t see how any of the likely military scenarios that may play out in the coming days will benefit the innocent civilians of Syria, the national security goals of the west or (somewhat materialistically) the economic and financial wellbeing of anyone at all.

But at least, among the many stories of loss and mourning, there is at least one human story from Syria today with a happy ending.

The short piece concludes:

If you can hold it together through all seven minutes, you’re stronger than I am. But this video provides a welcome, if all too rare, moment of solace and joy in a war that has had precious little of either.

I’m with Max Fisher on this one.

Terrorism Supporter Peter King Is Right

Samuel Hooper3 Comments

Peter King IRA

 

Even enthusiastic terrorism supporter Congressman Peter King (R-NY) thinks that the Obama administration is leaking sensitive classified information for political gain.

Peter King is, of course, a bitter partisan, but for once this terrorism-supporting hack is right, calling out President Obama for allowing news to leak that his administration is providing non-direct military support to the Syrian rebels.

Politico reports:

Reports surfaced Thursday that Obama had authorized nonlethal aid, such as communications equipment, to the Syrian rebels. In response, King sent a letter to FBI Director Robert Mueller, asking that the agency add these reports to an investigation he had requested into national security leaks.

“These reported disclosures represent additional disturbing and irresponsible leaks of potentially classified information from this Administration,” he wrote [pdf]. “Obviously, the ongoing investigations have failed to deter further leaks.

The Obama administration needs to stop with the the targetted leakings of information designed to make President Obama look good, while coming down like a ton of bricks on whistleblowers who leak information that makes him look weak. Particularly if he really does want to shed his image as a grudge-holding Chicago machine politician.

Much as I disagree with Peter King about many things, and hold him in total contempt for his previous support for the IRA yet now worrying about radical Islamist terrorism in America, he is right to say:

“The only thing I can think of this is an attempt to rehabilitate the president going into an election year to show that he’s a tough guy,” he said on Fox. “The president deserves credit for killing Osama bin Laden, but at that time they went beyond anything that had to be disclosed. I think it’s to enhance his reputation and it’s done in an irresponsible way.”

Obama needs to stop this nonsense. Now.

Stop circumventing the constitution by involving the US in foreign conflicts without getting the expressed permission of Congress first. And stop selectively leaking classified information when it suits his purposes, yet clamming up and withholding it when it does not.

This is not hope and change.

Oops

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Barbara Walters’s credibility takes an unfortunate knock with the recent revelations that she tried to help further the journalistic career of one of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad’s close aides:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/9312558/Barbara-Walters-apologises-over-links-to-Syrian-aide-of-Bashar-al-Assad.html

Says the Daily Telegraph:

Miss Jaafari, 22, was a close adviser to Mr Assad and was at his side as Syrian troops stepped up their campaign of killing and repression. She would speak to him several times a day, sometimes calling him “the Dude” in her adopted American accent, and was sometimes the only official in the room when he did interviews with Western journalists.

Miss Jaafari, whose father Bashar Jaafari has known Walters for around seven years, began dealing with the broadcaster late last year as ABC News lobbied for an interview with Mr Assad.

And worryingly:

Shortly afterwards, Walters emailed the young Syrian saying: “I wrote to Piers Morgan and his producer to say how terrific you are and attached your résumé.” She also asked whether Miss Jaafari was still planning on applying to Columbia University and offered to help.

A week later, Walters emailed Richard Wald, a professor at the Columbia School of Journalism and the father of Jonathan Wald, Morgan’s executive producer.

Walters described Miss Jaafari as “brilliant, beautiful, [and] speaks five languages” and asked whether there was “anything you can do to help?” Prof Wald replied that he would get the admissions office to “give her special attention”.

But despite this lapse in judgement, let us not forget the many high points in the career of Barbara Walters – none so resplendent as the time when she interviewed former Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain and asked him what cabinet position he would be interested in holding in a future Republican administration:

 

“WHAT?”