OILY AND OFTEN

3/26/11

When reporters asked State Department Spokesman Mark Toner why the Bush/Obama Administration is supporting the Libyan uprising but ignoring the uprising in Syria, Mr. Toner, in a fit of typical bureaucratic mealy-mouthedness, replied “…what’s happened and what is happening in Libya stands apart.” That Mr. Obama has decided to commit American blood and treasure (Make no mistake about the first.) to Libya establishes that what is happening there “stands apart.” The question is why it stands apart.

Diplomats like to engage in “diplomatic speak,” which is an easier expression to understand than “timid obfuscation.” The Pontificator, as loyal readers know, has little regard for the baloney that floats around the world under the guise of diplomatic speak, and thus can say what the diplomats can’t: the Bush/Obama Administration has wrongly decided to take action in Libya because Libya has lots of oil and Colonel Gadhafi (or however the press is spelling his name today) has few friends. The Bush/Obamaites are correctly not taking action in Syria because Syria has negligible amounts of oil and Bashar al-Assad has one very muscular friend, Iran. It’s as simple as that.

President Obama can talk all he want about the humanitarian disaster his feckless actions have prevented, and there may be something to that; the scale of Colonel Gadhafi’s actions against his opponents has dwarfed that of any of his tin-horn brothers in the fraternity of Middle Eastern thugs, many of whom Messrs. Bush and Obama had no problem with when they were doing the Bush/Obama administration’s bidding, but I digress. The scale argument, however, could quickly evaporate if Mr. al-Assad decides to get more enthusiastic in his response to the protests in the country his father willed him. The question that should concern us is whether, should Mr. al-Assad’s response match the scale and ferocity of that of Mr. Gadhafi, the Bush/Obama administration will draw the opposite conclusion of the one that those of us who are highlighting its hypocrisy are trying to promote and decide that Syria, too, deserves the protection of a “NATO led” no-fly zone and all that will derive from it.