Is The Reason Obama Does Nothing In Syria Because His Favorite Source Doesn't Report On It?

So how are things going in Syria?

Syria’s violent protests rage as government seals port city
Washington Post, April 10, 2011

Violent protests continued to roil Syria on Sunday as human rights activists reported that President Bashar al-Assad was using soldiers and tanks for the first time against demonstrators and sealing off the port city of Baniyas.

Syrian Forces Open Fire on Demonstrators in Two Cities
New York Times, April 9, 2011

Syrian security forces fired live ammunition at protesters in two cities on Saturday, a day after the single bloodiest day of Syria’s three-week antigovernment uprising.

Race against time
The Daily Star, April 9, 2011

Syrian President Bashar Assad appears to be seriously underestimating the nature of the protests shaking his nation, taking actions on the ground that undermine the regime’s public stance that it is ready to enact reforms.

Syrian Protests Are Said to Be Largest and Bloodiest to Date
New York Times, April 8, 2011

Dozens of communities across Syria erupted in protest on Friday in what activists said were by far the largest and bloodiest demonstrations against the iron rule of President Bashar al-Assad.

Considering how

• Syria is cracking down, shooting at and killing civilians.
• Syria had a hand in the killing of American troops in Iraq.
• Syria is a major supporter of terrorism in general and Hezbollah--which has killed hundreds of US troops--in particular

One might have thought that the Obama administration might have an interest in doing something, anything, to help the protesters in Syria.

But no, nothing.

Maybe that's because Obama's and Clinton's #1 favorite source for news on the Middle East is not reporting on Syria.


The Obama administration's go-to source for news on the Middle East is Al-Jazeera:

Walking back from the White House this week, Abderrahim Foukara, Washington bureau chief for Al-Jazeera television, could have been forgiven for pinching himself. He’d just met senior aides to President Barack Obama who had lavished praise on the Arab television network.

“They told us that during Egypt basically Al-Jazeera English was all they watched to try to make sense of what was going on,” he said, taking off his overcoat in the channel’s bureau on K Street, the boulevard that houses the city’s top lobbyists. The President, they made clear, had been one of those glued to the screen.

On Capitol Hill four weeks ago, Hillary Clinton, the United States Secretary of State, delivered what amounted to an advertisement for Al-Jazeera to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: “Viewership of Al-Jazeera is going up in the United States because it's real news,” she said.

“You may not agree with it, but you feel like you're getting real news around the clock instead of a million commercials and, you know, arguments between talking heads and the kind of stuff that we do on our news.” [emphasis added]

Yeah, discussion and debate among journalists can be such a distraction.

And it just so happens, As Lee Smith points out, that Al Jazeera doesn't think the protests in Syria are nearly as interesting as the ones in Egypt:

Al-Jazeera, which has been exceptionally silent on Syria, perhaps because of the good alliance between Assad and Al-Jazeera's owner, the Sheikh of Qatar, cherry-picked its coverage of Syrian rallies. To go after Bashar Assad means reversing years of Al-Jazeera coverage sympathetic to the Syrian leade

But that's OK, because Hillary Clinton says that Al-Jazeera is "real news"

Hey, ever hear of Wikilieaks?

Looks like Al-Jazeera is being (gasp!) used by Qatar:

The state-owned Doha-based broadcaster Al Jazeera is being used as a diplomatic tool in the Middle East despite claims of its independence, U.S. diplomats said a cable revealed by the online whistleblower WikiLeaks.

"Al Jazeera Arabic news channel will continue to be an instrument of Qatari influence, and continue to be an expression, however uncoordinated, of the nation's foreign policy," according to an assessment contained in one of the cables.

...The diplomats also noted a more positive portrayal of the U.S. by the channel since the election of Barack Obama.

So while on the one hand, you may think the US should do something about Syria:

Three weeks and hundreds of casualties into the Syrian uprising, resurfacing is the atavistic U.S. attachment to a regime that not only has killed thousands of its own citizens, but contributed to the deaths of dozens if not hundreds of U.S. troops and contractors in Iraq.

Al-Jazeera--and the Obama administration--don't see any reason to intervene.

So it's all good!

Technorati Tag: Syria and AlJazeera.