The liar’s doorstep: U.S. should mistrust Hafez Assad

The New Republic , August 12, 1991

In his eagerness to be a Middle East peacemaker, George Bush would do well to grasp the
measure of his fellow players. A year ago, with the invasion of Kuwait, Mr. Bush came to the
tardy recognition that Iraq’s Saddam Hussein is an enemy; but the president still seems to think
that Syria’s Hafez Assad is a friend. The truth is that the two are uncannily alike. Each belongs to
a minority group that holds power in its country by terror and torture. Each is responsible for
mass killings–the Sunni Saddam, of Kurds and majority Shiites by the tens of thousands in Iraq;
the Alawite Assad, of Sunnis by similar numbers in Syria. Each is a Baathist intent on creating and
ruling a united Arab nation, and each has built his claim to Arab leadership on a promise to rid the
Middle East of jewish Israel. The essence of Saddam’s and Assad’s mutual acrimony is not that
they are different creatures; it is that they both want the same thing.

Each, too, has squandered his country’s income on arms obtained from the Soviet Union. Each
has sponsored major terrorist groups, with Assad ahead in numbers of Americans killed by virtue
of the 1983 Marine barracks bombing and the 1988 destruction of Pan Am Flight 103. Each has
invaded his neighbors to gain regional hegemony. Saddam went after Iran and then Kuwait; Syria
has twice attacked Israel, has menaced Jordan, and now has 40,000 troops occupying Lebanon.
The key difference between them is that Saddam is a stupid brute, while Assad is a wily
maneuverer. Yet even Saddam was able to bamboozle the United States–from the mid-1970s
when he convinced Washington’s elites that he was a man we could work with, until last August
2.

Over the past year it’s been Assad’s turn to take Washington for a ride. Exploiting his rival’s
mistake, Assad joined George Bush’s Desert Shield coalition, sending 18,000 soldiers to Saudi
Arabia but committing none to combat in Desert Storm. In return he received American thanks, a
cordial visit from Secretary of State James Baker, and more than $ 2 billion from Saudi Arabia,
which he promptly spent outfitting a new armored division and purchasing Scud missiles from
North Korea. More important, he was allowed by the United States to crush his military foes in
Lebanon, massacre up to 700 disarmed enemies, and formally make that country a vassal state
under a “Treaty of Brotherhood, Cooperation, and Coordination” that was cheered by the State
Department. The salience of this recent history seems lost on the Bush administration, but the
questions it poses bear asking all the same: As long as Syria occupies Lebanon, by what right does
Syria demand an end to Israeli occupation of Arab territory? As long as the United States
condones Lebanon’s occupation, by what right does it insist that Israel trade “land for peace”?

Now the United States wants to make Assad a major player in its Middle East diplomacy. The
Bush administration is right to see Syria-currently Israel’s most powerful enemy-as a necessary
participant in any negotiations. Indeed, the administration deserves credit for facilitating the first
public face-to-face negotiations ever to occur between Syria and Israel, assuming that they
actually come off. But the central reality upon which the United States must base its policy is that
Assad has not changed his strategic aims. He has simply been forced by circumstance to change
his tactics. His former sponsor, the Soviet Union, has stopped supplying arms on a concessionary
basis and is in the process of making its own peace with Israel. The United States is the dominant
power in the region. With Iraq defeated, with Israel militarily strong, and with Egypt having long
since opted out of the Arab-Israeli conflict, there is no immediate possibility of conquering Israel
militarily. So instead of throwing himself in front of a locomotive, as Saddam did, Assad has
decided to hop aboard, whisper in the engineer’s ear, and try to get the United States to take him
where he wants to go.

He wants the Golan Heights. This demand alone, if the United States supports it, will set the
Bush administration against the 90 percent of Israelis who oppose ceding the Golan. The Israelis
find it hard to forget the Syrian shelling of Israeli towns and kibbutzim beneath the Golan before
1967. It will also mean a betrayal of President Ford’s commitment to Israel’s strategic claim to the
Golan, which the Bush administration has so far agreed to abide by. Assad also wants U.S.
credits, European loans, and Saudi grants to allow him to keep his debt-ridden economy going
and to buy more rockets, tanks, and chemical weapons. He wants to hold onto Lebanon and have
influence over Jordan and the Palestinian Arabs in the West Bank. Conceivably, he might trade all
this for “non-belligerency” toward Israel, but he has yet even to hint at full peace and acceptance
of Israel’s permanent presence in the region. Assad, in short, is no Anwar Sadat. Israel will talk to
Syria because for the first time it is possible-and, as an Arab saying goes, “to follow the liar to his
doorstep.”

The Bush administration seems all too likely to help Assad, and to ignore his lies along the way.
At every turn the president and secretary of state heap praise and solicitude on the Arab states,
and show barely concealed distaste for Israel. The administration hailed Syria’s delayed agreement
to attend its Middle East peace conference as a breakthrough,” while giving Israel no credit for
accepting as co-chairman of the conference a nation, the Soviet Union, that does not yet
recognize Israel. Washington chooses not to dwell on the fact that the jordanian Parliament has
already voted against the peace process. The administration showed no understanding of Israel’s
reluctance to have the U.N. participate in the conference, despite a decades-long record of U.N.
condemnations of Israel and Zionism.

The administration acted miffed when Israel hesitated about attending the conference, pending
resolution of the question of Palestinian representation, but directed no barbs toward the
Palestinian side when it threatened not to show up unless it got its way. Meanwhile, when Saudi
Arabia declined to participate at all, the administration did nothing to insist, even though the
Saudis have been the main financier of Arab wars against Israel and are supposedly America’s
foremost Arab ally. President Bush kept nagging Israel to stop building settlements in the West
Bank, but when Mr. Baker was asked about continuing Syrian support for terrorists, he said that
this was “a separate matter” from peace diplomacy.

It appears that a Mideast peace conference will take place this October. Direct talks between
Syria, other Arab states, and Israel, and talks between Israel and a joint Jordanian-Palestinian
delegation are to follow, although the Arabs seem unwilling to state categorically that they
welcome face-to-face talks. What’s important is that the United States not rush the proceedings
toward conclusion-say, in time for the 1992 presidential elections. Israel has every right to
demand a long confidence-building period and extensive safeguards before it agrees to give
anything to Syria or to the Palestinians. It is reasonable for Israel (and the United States) to
expect Syria to reduce its defense expenditures, agree to leave Lebanon, and forswear terrorism.
It is reasonable for Israel to expect an open-ended presence on both the Golan Heights and the
West Bank, or even shared sovereignty, to ensure that it is secure from attack.

Peace negotiations, in other words, are likely to be long and drawn out. It is the Bush
administration’s legitimate role to find ways to help the Arabs and the Israelis reach
accommodations, but not to pressure Israel to make concessions. Syria, mastermind of the Pan
Am massacre, does not deserve U.S. favoritism. The Palestinians and King Hussein, having sided
with Saddam Hussein, do not deserve it either. But we expect that Assad is banking on President
Bush to put pressure on Israel, which both the United States and Israel would likely regret. And
given the president’s record of misunderstanding Arab tyrants, we fear he will try to give Assad
what he wants.