The rise and fall of the Syrian National Council (SNC)

By Ted Belman

Foreign Policy, in a major article, refers to the SNC as “The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight”.

It contains a lot of new information about the goings on but from my point of view, it misses a major part of the storey, namely, the SNC was fully backed by the US who made certain that was dominated by the MB. The US also partnered with PM Erdogan of Turkey, an Islamist himself, to oversee developments and to keep his hand in the deal. Try as they did, they could not enable the SNC to make progress. This article written by a British Syrian, Malik al-Abdeh, explains why not.

For some reason he started the article off as follows:

    Last week, the Syrian opposition columnist Ghassan Muflih, writing in the online newspaper Elaph, informed his readers who was to blame for the failure to dislodge Bashar al-Assad. “The West is supportive of the demands of the Syrian people [to live in] freedom and dignity but does not encourage the success of the revolution,” he wrote. “The reasons are related to the Israeli desire to see the destruction of Syria at the hands of the Assad gangs. The Western position is justified by flimsy arguments, for example, when they speak of Islamist militants or the unity of the opposition. However, the essence of the western position remains: Give Assad more time to kill.”

Totally aside from the ludicrous charge that the conflict is ongoing because Israel desires that the killings go on and the West’s support of the Israeli desires, why hasn’t the west delivered the coup de gras? He doesn’t answer this. For him its all about the failings of the SNC.

September 8, 2012 | 19 Comments »

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19 Comments / 19 Comments

  1. @ Felix Quigley:
    OK, but at least, I did not call you anything. I just reported to you that I don’t understand your article and asked you to express yourself in a simpler language, and perhaps shorter, too.

  2. “Since the beginning of the Arab Spring Jews have lagged behind the situation”

    Please explain how the Jews have “lagged behind.”

  3. Since the beginning of the Arab Spring Jews have lagged behind the situation. There is a strategy behind the US, Europe and Jihadist Islam that bodes very ill for Israel and Jews. That is the point. That is what Robert Spencer is saying re Syria.

  4. “Totally aside from the ludicrous charge that the conflict is ongoing because of Israel’s desires that the killings go on, and the West’s support of the Israeli desires, why hasn’t the west delivered the coup de gras?

    @ Ben Ze’ev:

    “…TED, the term is ‘coup de GRACE (not ‘gras’), unless you are using some unique American term.”

    Actually, I believe Ted would tell you he’s Israeli.

    Jerusalem-based.

    Formerly Canadian (maybe still so, as well).

    Not American.

    Of course, he’ll doubtless get round eventually to setting you straight on that himself.

    Notwithstanding all that though, in America we DO have a way of “finishing people off”

    — by means of fat.

    Just ask Michele Obama.

    So, all things considered, and with a little work

    — ‘coup de gras‘ might turn out to be not too far off the mark.

    Here’s the plan:
    Maybe we could just force-funnel hummus down Mr Assad’s gullet till his liver swells up like a tick bloated on moose blood

    — then, after carefully twisting off that little head, sell ounces of him on the open market as pâté de foie schmaltz?

  5. Ben Ze’ev Said:

    i wouldn’t say “most readers” I’d be conservative and say “all” readers. I would further say that anyone who alleges that he does understand Quigley, should be regarded with extreme suspicion……

    Well, that’s a relief to hear that.
    English is not my first language. Actually it is my 4th. So I always give people some benefit of doubt.

  6. @ vivarto:

    That reminds me of the old Julian Rose monologue, “Levinsky At The Wedding” where “everybaddy waas crying, Mrs. Cohen said that if she knew why, she would cry too”….

    Sorry folks.

  7. @ vivarto:

    i wouldn’t say “most readers” I’d be conservative and say “all” readers. I would further say that anyone who alleges that he does understand Quigley, should be regarded with extreme suspicion……

  8. @ yamit82:

    I beleieve I read that this was a comment by a French doctor on his return to France. All previous info seems to lead to the same point.

    And…TED, the term is “coup de GRACE” (not “gras) unless you are using some unique American term.


  9. Al-Qaeda, US, and Syrian Crisis

    “They [the rebels] are directly saying that they aren’t interested in Bashar al-Assad’s fall, but are thinking about how to take power afterwards and set up an Islamic state with sharia law to become part of the world Emirate.”

    Such a credible firsthand account only adds to the mounting body of evidence found in Western media reports indicating a growing influx of al-Qaeda aligned fighters into Syria.

    For example, a recent story from GlobalPost reported “a significant presence” of al-Qaeda linked militants fighting within the Syrian city of Aleppo. Likewise, an August report in the Israeli daily Haaretz, citing US intelligence officials, noted that al-Qaeda “is building a network of well-organized cells” within Syria.

    The growing frequency of such revelations in the Western press has caused those in Washington seeking to topple the Syrian government to shift from dismissing all such accounts as merely the propaganda of the Syrian government, to seeking to cynically seize upon al-Qaeda’s presence.

    Such imperial opportunism has principally taken the form of using the specter of al-Qaeda as another pretext for an escalated level of US intervention into the Syrian crisis.

    As the Associated Press reported this week, “The US is ramping up its presence at Syria’s Turkish border, sending more spies and diplomats to help advise the rebel forces in their mismatched fight against the better armed Syrian regime, and to watch for possible al-Qaida infiltration of rebel ranks.”

    Of course, the al-Qaeda menace is also used by Syrian rebels seeking more Western arms. For without such assistance, rebels warn, they will be forced turn to al-Qaeda.

  10. As the American Jewish poet Louis Simpson (my very favourite) once said, “They are foreign, even to themselves.” Actually, vivarto, dear Felix (besides having illusions of grandeur about his broken intellect) is an anti-Jewish bigot, only he is very adept at disguising it. Up here in Irish Canada they simply say about people like him that “he’s f**ked in the head.”

  11. @ Felix Quigley:
    Boy this was long, potentially interesting, but in reality unreadable and unintelligible.
    I am sure that author meant something, but his/she is steeped in his/her own frame of reference entirely foreign to me, and most readers.
    Learn to write

  12. Ted

    It saddens me quite a bit (because day dreams can be comforting but usually fatal) to say that you and Mr Gordon with your dreams of fereration in Syria have proved to be just that…day dreams.

    Even for the poor and unfortunate Kurds there only really was one hope…and it went against almost logic…defend Assad.

    I hope that now unlike Caroline Glick about a year and a half ago you will begin to understand some of the tactics and strategy of the traditional common sense contained within MY tradition.

    This debate is now raging on Jihadwatch and Robert Spencer though he will never admit it in so many words has finally joined Trotsky. As my comment and other comments make very clear:

    “I don’t wear that (huh) pin on my chest”

    Obama speaking in Iowa (video on you tube)

    http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=tCAffMSWSzY#t=28

    (Also referred to today on http://www.israpundit.org)

    The pin to which your Muslim Prez was referring to was the American Flag pin and was worn by all main American political leaders following 9/11…

    Now look carefully what America under Obama is doing in Syria, and sadly history teaches us that it could well be the Republican party too.

    In Yugoslavia America made a big pretence of being reluctant to intervene against the Serbs. It appeared that it was Germany, Britain and France that wanted oh so badly to intervene on behalf of Islam against Christianity as represented by the Serbs

    However within 20 minutes of the ITN picture being flashed across the screens of a skinny Muslim in Bosnia (The “picture that fooled the world”…google that and “Penny Marshall”) Bush Snr. had launched American jets to bomb the Christians on behalf of Islam.

    Over recent months one would have been forgiven for thinking that America was not going to intervene militarily against Assad on behalf of the Muslim Brotherhood Fascist Christian haters. Once again it seemed that those nasty Europeans were alone wanting to bomb Assad.

    But wait! Quel surprise!

    Debkafile today has this amazing couple of paragraphs:

    “Despite fairly large-scale defections, the bulk of the Syrian army still maintains its allegiance to the Syrian ruler and doesn’t appear ready to turn against him. The rebels therefore face a long, arduous and hazardous haul before they can secure a substantial safe haven – unless it can be shortened by a step now under consideration in Washington, London, Paris, Ankara and at least two Arab capitals: aerial bombardment of the Syrian army’s toughest backbone, the 9th Division commanded by the Syrian ruler’s brother, Gen. Maher Assad. .

    The same treatment could be meted out to smash Hizballah bases and strategic centers.

    The thinking in some circles in Washington is that Russia’s disengagement from its support of the Assad regime and cutoff of essential weapons, have opened the way to severing the military bonds tying Assad, Hizballah and Tehran together. As long as those bonds are viable, it will be that much harder to bring Assad to heel and subjugate his armed forces.

    http://www.debka.com/article/22344/Chemical-threat-is-back-Hizballah-Israel-close-to-clash-

    Repeat and focus: “ unless it can be shortened by a step now under consideration in Washington…”

    WOW…those reluctant Americans, trying so valiantly to keep to “keep the peace!”

    Note also how Debka spots some of this additional thinking going on in Washington. “Sever the ties between Assad and Iran.” In other words destroy Assad but conserve Iran. Ah you really think like the Fascist Leftist Dullards it is destroy Assad to destroy Iran and Hamas? Start growing up!

    But we all know, or should know, that the Iranian Fascist regime was cultivated by the US CIA and France from the earliest stage to overthrow the Shah.

    And we all know or should know that the American Governments have nourished the Iranian Fascist regime which the American Government (of Carter but followed on by Reagan) created in the first place.

    Why though? The answer is very, very simple. America, and I mean not American people but American Governments, are in alliance with The Muslim Brotherhood and with all forms of authentic Islam, that is Islamic Jihad, violence the only real quality of Islam, in order to subjugate the Muslim poor and hungry, becoming hungrier as the crisis deepens.

    And American power elite stir up Antisemitism as a weapon to use against the working class and progressives like Spencer who even at this early stage is having to employ guards.

    Israel is on its own. The Muslim Obama has engineered a situation that if Israel defends itself against Iran Israel will be seen by the world as a basket case.

    America wants dominance and it cannot have dominance in the world without the Jews stripped of their defensive Nuclear weapons. THAT is what the US is after.

    Note also that Russia and China opened the way for the Muslim Brotherhood before…in Libya with the UN Resolution of 2011 which opened the door to the bombing of Libya. Now have they done it once more. The collaborationist with Imperialism Joseph Stalin would be proud of these Stalinists.

    There is a long history to this issue and I refer to a comment I made on the Caroline Glick website a year and a half ago. Caroline unfortunately did not understand my point then and still does not.

    We were discussing Mubarak and Egypt:

    {http://www.carolineglick.com/e/2011/03/the-new-middle-east.php}

    “They seem unable to see that if you do not defend Milosevic against Fascism then there are results. Similarly if you do not defend the outstanding propagandist Glenn Beck against the charge of antisemitism there are results. If you do not defend Mubarak in time, the same. And now of course we have Gadaffi.
    This is a principled tactical position. You maintain your independence in every situation. Against the main enemy the defence is unconditional but it does not imply agreement with the person or thing in question.

    I am always drawn to the reworking of the Aesop fable by Leon Trotsky. In this he expressed the essence of the 1933 period which laid the basis for the Holocaust which so damaged your people:

    AN AESOP FABLE
    From What Next? Vital Question for the German Proletariat, 1932
    * * *

    A cattle dealer once drove some bulls to the slaughterhouse. And the butcher came night with his sharp knife.
    “Let us close ranks and jack up this executioner on our horns,” suggested one of the bulls.

    “If you please, in what way is the butcher any worse than the dealer who drove us hither with his cudgel?” replied the bulls, who had received their political education in Manuilsky’s institute. [The Comintern.]

    “But we shall be able to attend to the dealer as well afterwards!”

    “Nothing doing,” replied the bulls firm in their principles, to the counselor. “You are trying, from the left, to shield our enemies — you are a social-butcher yourself.”

    And they refused to close ranks.

    That reworking of Aesop is from

    http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1944/1944-fas.htm#p4

    By Felix Quigley from way back on March 6, 2011 6:27 AM

    {The remarkable Jihadwatch article today is on http://www.jihadwatch.org/2012/09/syrian-general-dont-they-understand-that-we-are-the-last-dam-that-is-holding-back-the-flood-of-islam.html and is entitled “Syrian General: “Don’t they understand that we are the last dam that is holding back the flood of Islamists in Europe? What blindness.”}

    Precisely what I said to you Ted so long ago but like Caroline you would not listen. I said that Assad was the key. You defend Assad or you are lost. It seemed counter-intuitive but the truth is often like that.