HERE WE GO AGAIN: CENTER’S FEITH WARNS CONGRESS AGAINST CODDLING ASSAD AS U.S. ONCE DID SADDAM

(Washington, D.C.): Congress was
advised Wednesday of alarming
parallels between, on the one
hand, the dangerous totalitarian
regimes of Saddam Hussein and
Hafez el Assad and, on the other, the
Bush Administration’s present effort to
appease the Syrian despot and
its earlier coddling of his Iraqi
counterpart.

In testimony on 24 April 1991 before
the U.S. House of Representatives’ Human
Rights Caucus, Douglas J. Feith, a member
of the Center for Security Policy’s Board
of Advisors, forcefully argued against
repeating with Damascus the costly
mistakes Washington made in recent years
with Baghdad. Feith, who is a partner in
the Washington law firm of Feith and Zell
and a former Deputy Assistant Secretary
of Defense and Middle East expert on the
Reagan National Security Council staff,
called for a policy toward Syria rooted
in the American attachment to freedom,
human rights and democracy, a policy that
would stymie — rather than reward
— Assad’s malevolent behavior.

Highlights of Feith’s testimony
included:

“…A government that
exercises unlimited power at
home, being above its own laws,
will hardly feel bound by that
underdeveloped, inferior species
of law known as the norms of
international behavior.”

“Policies of repression at
home and militarism
abroad…reinforce each
other.”

“Recent U.S. diplomacy
toward Syria suggests that the
‘pragmatists’ who make foreign
policy in the Bush Administration
do not see this interconnection
among human rights, limited
government, law, peace, order and
American interests.”

“The factors that made
Saddam Hussein a threat to world
order and U.S. interests — the
factors that compelled us to
treat him as an outlaw rather
than a fellow member of the
community of law-abiding nations
— apply also in the case of
Hafez al-Assad.”

“The Administration’s
conciliatory policies toward
Syria — its high-level, high
visibility consultations with
Assad, acquiescence in Syrian
domination of Lebanon, and
failure to make an issue of
Assad’s despotism, support of
terrorism and anti-Israel
rejectionism — send signals that
conflict with the most important
messages that Desert Storm was
supposed to convey.”

The Center for Security Policy
strongly endorses Feith’s contention that
long-term U.S. interests will be greatly
disserved by the Bush Administration’s
present policy of subordinating freedom
to expedient arrangements with those who
are freedom’s enemies. The Center
believes Feith’s testimony href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=91-P_34at”>(excerpts of which
are attached) — a compelling
articulation of the case for Pax
Democratica — should be
required reading for the entire security
policy community.