The liberal romance with Fidel Castro

The left shows sympathy for brutal Cuban dictator and a would-be mass murderer at Ohio State

The lunacy of the left, Embracing Dictators

EXCERPT FROM THIS ARTICLE:  Robert Kaplan called his regime “anarchy masquerading as tyranny. .  .  . Saddam was beyond ‘brutal.’ The word brutal has a generic and insipid ring to it .  .  . that simply does not capture what Iraq was like under his rule.” In 1980, he invaded Iran, starting a war that killed more than a million people and lasted eight years. In the aftermath, he gassed thousands of Kurds who tried to shake off his domination. In 1990, he invaded Kuwait, in an attempt to seize control of its oil fields, from which he was ejected months later by an American-led coalition assembled by the first President Bush. He spent the next decade in attempts to avoid the conditions of weapons inspections on which the cease-fire was based.  (see more below)

Is the world better off than it was eight years ago?

Is the Middle East? Is Iraq? These questions, echoing the one asked by Ronald Reagan in his debate with Jimmy Carter just before the 1980 election, should be posed by all Republicans until the polls close in November 2016. Added to these are a few other things .  .  .

Is Ukraine better off? Do we have more allies? Are we more trusted by them? Of course some countries are better off now than they were before Barack Obama unleashed his transformative powers, but these include Iran, Russia, and Cuba, which may not be a good thing. (On the other hand, our relations with Israel, the Gulf Arabs, and the former possessions of the Soviet empire have hit a new low.) Is the Western world safer from terrorist violence? Since ISIS exploded, violent incidents triggered by it have taken place in countries as widespread as Denmark, Australia, and France. By contrast, since the shock of September 11, 2001, nothing of the sort has taken place again in America, which most at the time would have thought an unlikely development. In the weeks and months after, President Bush, in a very short time and under a great deal of pressure, constructed protocols for the containment of terror that prevented further attacks on this country, and that Obama, despite much complaining, once he was in office did nothing to change. It is a fact that after a brilliantly executed invasion in 2003, Bush let the occupation of Iraq begin badly, and become a catastrophe, but it is a fact too that at the very last moment he changed course dramatically, and—against the intense opposition of the Democrats—turned the situation around by the time he left office, so dramatically that in a few years the Democrats would be saying it had been their accomplishment.

Despite the complaints from the left (and from some on the right) that the Bush foreign policy had been a disaster, the facts are that his security policy was a success, and he left Iraq on a fairly sound footing and in the process of evolving into an imperfect democracy. (If you don’t believe that, see what the Democrats were saying circa 2010-2012, or just prior to our leaving that country.) The last two are facts, based on what did and what failed to happen, and the assessments made at the time, and not later in retrospect. On the contrary, the complaints made by critics—that the invasion of Iraq was unwise and unwarranted, and that the world would have been better off had Saddam stayed in power—are based on conjecture, and the creation of alternative outcomes in projected scenarios that have no basis in fact. (more…)

Complete interview…Foreign Affairs: www.foreignaffairs.com/discussions/interviews/syrias-president-speaks

I interviewed Bashar al-Assad about Syria’s civil war. He’s still too delusional to end it.

By Jonathan Tepperman  Washington Post January 30 2015

Jonathan Tepperman, the managing editor of Foreign Affairs magazine, is writing a book on how to solve the world’s toughest political and economic challenges.

In recent weeks, Western governments have begun subtly shifting their positions on Syria. The Obama administration seems to have quietly dropped its demand that President Bashar al-Assad resign as a precondition of peace talks. Instead, reports suggest it has embraced proposals that would allow Assad to be part of an interim deal. The new approach implies that the White House and its allies believe that the Syrian president might be open to a compromise that could end his country’s four-year civil war.

I met with Assad on Jan. 20 in Damascus — his first interview by an American journalist since 2013. And if there was one clear takeaway from our talk, which you can read in full in Foreign Affairs, it was this: Such hopes are a fantasy. Superficially, Assad said many of the right things, appearing conciliatory and eager to involve Western governments in his struggle against Islamist terrorism. But underneath the pretty words, he remains as unrepentant and inflexible today as he was at the start of the Syrian civil war four years ago. Assad seems to have no idea how badly the war is going, how impractical his proposals sound and how meaningless his purported overtures are. Which means that, whatever Western leaders might wish, the fighting in Syria will end in one of two ways. Either Assad will defeat the rebels. Or the rebels will defeat him — and string him up by his toes.

Visiting Syria today is a strange and unsettling experience. The signs of war are everywhere. Damascus is surrounded by snow-capped mountains and concentric rings of army checkpoints, manned by twitchy soldiers unsure how to respond when a solitary American — I traveled without security but hired a local driver — shows up. (Some were indifferent, others were hostile, and one grabbed my hand and declared, “The Syrian Arab Republic Army loves the American press!”) High concrete blast walls shield most buildings, red-and-white-striped gun turrets loom over intersections, posters of Assad in shades and black military dress hang from lampposts, United Nations aid workers fill the hotels, and the booms and pops of artillery and mortar fire echo from the front, just a few miles away.

Yet despite the siege, cafes and markets are bustling. The streets are thronged with families out shopping, with students heading to school — and with hundreds of thousands of refugees who have more than doubled the city’s population since the war began. (more…)

Haunted by Syria?

President Obama is unmoved by the atrocities on his watch

Elliott Abrams

Elliott Abrams is a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of Tested by Zion: The Bush Administration and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.