Not a Pretty Picture
Russian president Vladmir Putin convening a confab with the leaders of Iran and Turkey. What could go wrong?
I t was a remarkable sight: Russian president Vladimir Putin hugging Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad on the veranda of his dacha on the Black Sea.
Embracing a murderer the killer and torturer of thousands a man who will surely be charged with war crimes the man who destroyed his own country to stay in power?
Yes that’s the same Bashar al-Assad Putin’s ally in the Middle East the nominal head of a country propped up by Moscow and Tehran.
The image was pure evil and pure Putin. I couldn’t care less what you think the picture screams. I know he destroyed entire cities and used chemical weapons to asphyxiate his own people but he’s the only guy left standing in Syria — and I’m right there with him. The dictator whom Obama demanded leave office? Ha wishful thinking. Guess who won the war?
But Putin wasn’t done yet. He ushered the spindly Assad into a conference room full of Russian military men to introduce the Syrian murderer to the generals who had won the war for him. I don’t think Putin was trying to teach Assad about hakaras hatov. Rather the message was clear. Lest you forget in years to come why exactly you still sit on your throne engrave this image in your head. Without us you’d be toast.
A day later Putin took a call from President Trump to tell him what he was up to in the Middle East. The official White House statement said the world leaders “stressed the importance” of ensuring “the stability of a unified Syria free of malign intervention and terrorist safe havens.” Tellingly “unified Syria” is code for “under Assad’s control.” “Malign intervention” in this case does not refer to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.
Putin at his dacha embracing Syria’s Assad
The following day Putin hosted the leaders of Turkey and Iran at that same Black Sea dacha to discuss the new Middle East. If it’s possible the photo-op from that occasion was even more nauseating than Putin embracing the butcher of Damascus. There was Putin front and center smiling smugly as he joined hand in hand with Iran’s president Hassan Rouhani and Turkey’s leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan. They looked as if they had just won the lottery or some perverse new game show called “Let’s Ruin the World!” As one Twitter pundit ably observed after viewing the photo: “What could possibly go wrong?”
A lot especially in the absence of American leadership. Guess who wasn’t invited to Sochi? Mr. Personality the president of the United States. Though Defense Secretary James Mattis has said in recent weeks that the United States has no intention of leaving Syria soon (and in fact American troop levels have increased to more than 1 700 in the last four months) it’s understood that the American sphere of influence is small. Washington has its Kurdish allies in the north but along with Saudi Arabia the Americans will be invited guests at the Syrian peace conference that Moscow will host.
For all his bluster Donald Trump is a spectator on the Syria scene. Like President Obama before him he’s watched as Assad has slowly recaptured territory and decapitated his enemies. True Assad and company will have to account for American troops in the short term but what’s a few years in a region where recorded history began? (Excerpted from Mishpacha Issue 687)
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