Barry Rubin: Senator John McCain (Ignorantly) Backs Islamist-Dominated Syrian Opposition Leaders

Senator John McCain (Ignorantly) Backs Islamist-Dominated Syrian Opposition Leaders

By Barry Rubin

Also you can read Barry Rubin's new article, Is Libya An Islamist State?


I’ve warned that the Obama Administration, through the Islamist Turkish government, has produced a majority Islamist leadership. Let me emphasize this point: the Syrian people didn’t chose this exile leadership, the American president and his colleagues did. And in my articles I warned that support would soon pour in from Westerners who had no idea they were promoting a ftuture anti-American Islamist Syria

It is vital to understand that Syria is different from Libya, Tunisia and Egypt. A revolutionary Islamist regime is not inevitable. There are plenty of moderates and those non-Muslims or non-Arabs loyal first and foremost to their own community (Druze, Christians, Kurds, tribes, and even potentially Alawites) who don’t want Islamism. That’s why this disaster is avoidable and all the more strategic sin on the Obama Administration for making an unnecessary catastrophe more likely.

In historical terms, it would be as if the Western powers helped create and back a Communist-dominated opposition council in pre-revolutionary Russia even though the Bolsheviks weren’t in the majority.


Sure enough, along comes Senator John McCain, straight from his foolishly blind unnuanced endorsement and whitewashing of the new Libyan regime, and what does he do? At a World Economic Forum meeting in Amman, October 23, the senator suggest that now that the Libyan crisis is solved (!):

Continue reading Senator John McCain (Ignorantly) Backs Islamist-Dominated Syrian Opposition Leaders

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). His latest book is Israel: An Introduction, to be published by Yale University Press in January 2012. You can read more of Barry Rubin's posts at Rubin Reports, and now on his new blog, Rubin Reports, on Pajamas Media

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