July 19, 2012 | National Post

How Obama’s Hands-Off Policy Paved the Way for the Assads’ (and Hezbollah’s) Downfall

July 19, 2012 | National Post

How Obama’s Hands-Off Policy Paved the Way for the Assads’ (and Hezbollah’s) Downfall

The good news is that Bashar Assad’s Syrian regime is on its last legs — the other legs having been blown out from under it by a Wednesday bomb attack in Damascus, which killed at least three top regime security officials.

Here’s the better news: Hezbollah could go down with the Syrian ship, thereby providing the civilized world with a “two-fer” rogue-power takedown — dethroning not only the dictator in Damascus, but also his Lebanese-based, Iranian-funded terrorist ally next door.

Now here’s the best news: All this has happened without the West firing a shot. Notwithstanding all those Washington hawks demanding armed intervention, it turns out that Barack Obama played his cards exactly right — by doing virtually nothing.

The West’s response to Syria’s uprising — discreetly providing the rebels with limited behind-the-scenes logistical support through the Turkish border, while pushing blame onto bad-cop Russia for the failure to do more — undercut Bashar Assad’s early claim that the rebellion was a giant foreign conspiracy. Had the West gotten involved militarily, the entire narrative would have been about which American bomb hit which Syrian target, and whether the people who died as a result were civilians or fighters — the same narrative Israel faced when it attacked Hezbollah-controlled southern Lebanon six years ago.

By doing next to nothing, Obama has ensured that the Syrian civil war (which is what the Red Cross is now calling it) has correctly been perceived, inside Syria and out, as exactly what it is: a homegrown rebellion against an old-fashioned Arab tyrant too inept to understand that the winds of the Arab Spring were never confined to North Africa and the Persian Gulf.

Hassan Nasrallah, it turns out, is just as tone deaf. Since 2006, the Hezbollah chief has been widely viewed as an up-and-comer — a sort of Shiite version of Yasser Arafat who was gradually making himself the Islamist king of Lebanon. Yet his staunch support of the Assad dynasty suggests he is in his twilight.

On Wednesday, Nasrallah delivered a speech that was supposed to be about the 6th anniversary of his 2006 war with Israel. Instead, he turned it into a love letter to the Assads. “In the [2006] war, the most valuable weapons we had in our possession were from Syria,” he declared. “The missiles we used in the Second Lebanon War were made in Syria. And it’s not only in Lebanon but in Gaza as well … This is the Syria of Bashar Assad, this is the Syria of the shahid [martyr] leaders. We denounce this blow [Wednesday’s bombing in Damascus], which only serves the interests of the enemy. These shahids were our comrades in arms.”

The “shahids” Mr. Nasrallah is referring to were former Syrian deputy chief of staff Asef Shawkat, Defence Minister Dawoud Rajha and ex-defence minister Hassan Turkmani. In other words: A who’s who of the insiders who’ve been keeping the Syrian population under the Assads’ jackboots for decades.

In the last year, Nasrallah has gone from the man who stood up against “Zionist aggression” to the man who stands up for the butcher of Damascus. Among Lebanon’s Sunni population, many of whom have relatives on the other side of the Syrian border, he’s become a hated figure. Advantage: Israel, the United States, and the entire free world.

What will the post-Assad order look like in Syria? For one thing, it likely won’t be truly “post-Assad,” because Bashar and his fellow Allawi elite will de-camp to their centuries-old base in northwestern Syria, an impossible geographical nut to crack for any ragtag rebel force. A de facto Allawi mini-state may survive for years — or even permanently — as the rest of Syria sorts itself out. It may emerge as a democracy, or a Sunni theocracy, or something in between (like Egypt).

The West will have very little to say about the way these events play out — unless we’re willing to invade the country, an option that would begin to look attractive only if the country’s chemical weapons falling into the hands of a terrorist group. As with Iraq, Syria is an explosive combination of religious and ethnic groups, held together for decades by a ruthless cadre from within a minority Islamic sect. Elements from these competing groups will be at each others’ throats as soon as the opportunity permits. Barring a Western life-or-death foreign-policy objective presenting itself, neither Obama (or Mitt Romney) will attempt any sort of peacemaking operation.

They’d be right to keep our powder dry. Sometimes, doing nothing is the West’s best option.

Jonathan Kay is Managing Editor for Comment at the National Post, and a fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Follow him on Twitter @jonkay.

Issues:

Hezbollah Syria