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U.S. Should Encourage the Syrian Uprising

(Boston Globe) Jeff Jacoby - If the U.S. has good reason to support the popular revolt in Libya, it has considerably more reason to do so in Syria. Though Bashar Assad's brutality has not yet exceeded that of his father - in 1982 Hafez al-Assad annihilated some 25,000 civilians in the city of Hama, then literally paved over their remains - his own reign has nevertheless been a horror show of repression, torture, assassination, disappearances, and the near-total denial of civil and political liberties. Assad is no reformer. He is a totalitarian criminal and an enemy of the U.S., and his downfall should be an explicit American aim. In his remarks on Libya the other night, the president promised that "wherever people long to be free, they will find a friend in the United States." At a moment like this, the Obama administration should be taking every reasonable step to encourage the Syrian uprising and undermine the regime.
2011-03-30 00:00:00
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