person:charles glass

Charles Glass : La guerre de Syrie, une erreur de calcul - De notre correspondante à New York, Sylviane ZEHIL - L’Orient-Le Jour
▻http://www.lorientlejour.com/article/976345/charles-glass-la-guerre-de-syrie-une-erreur-de-calcul.html

« Les partisans du soulèvement initial en 2011 ont imaginé une victoire rapide... Un ami syrien, qui vit maintenant en exil, m’a dit que l’ambassadeur américain en Syrie, Robert Ford, avait essayé, juste avant qu’il ne quitte Damas en octobre 2011, de le recruter pour prendre part au gouvernement qui devait remplacer prochainement Assad. Lorsque l’ambassadeur de France en Syrie, Éric Chevallier, a quitté Damas le 6 mars 2012, il avait dit à des amis qu’il serait de retour lorsque le gouvernement post-Assad serait "installé" dans les prochains deux mois. Depuis lors, avec Assad encore au pouvoir, le nombre de morts a grimpé à plus de 270 000. D’une population de 22 millions d’âmes avant la guerre, plus de quatre millions de Syriens ont fui le pays, et 6,6 millions sont déplacés à l’intérieur du pays », souligne-t-il. « Robert Ford, qui avait défendu la révolution et encouragé sa militarisation, est l’un des rares fonctionnaires à avoir admis publiquement qu’il s’était trompé », note-t-il.
(...)
Personne n’a tenu compte de l’avertissement de Nietzsche, repris au début de la révolution syrienne par Masalit Mati, écrivain satirique anti-Assad, dans son spectacle de marionnettes : "Soyez prudents lorsque vous vous battez contre les monstres, de peur que vous n’en deveniez un" », poursuit-il.

#syrie

Lire absolument : Charles Glass sur l’insurrection syrienne, son parallèle historique avec les palestino-progressistes des années 70 et le rôle des puissances extérieures - Arabie saoudite en tête - dans leur parasitage.

▻http://mondoweiss.net/2015/09/syrias-revolution-different

Tout ou presque sur l’histoire des Lawrence d’Arabie de la CIA

America’s Great Game: The CIA’s Secret Arabists and the Shaping of the Modern Middle East

Charles Glass reviews a new book on the history of the CIA’s Arabists for the TLS:

In 1947, two American intelligence operatives, Miles Copeland and Archie Roosevelt, flew from Washington to the Levant together to take up posts in, respectively, Damascus and Beirut. Copeland described the pair at that time as “me a New Orleans jazz musician and Tennessee riverboat gambler, he a member in good standing of what passes for nobility in America”. The two became friends and co-conspirators, who, together with Archie’s cousin Kim Roosevelt, did more to mould the modern Middle East than the so-called policy-makers in Washington. Hugh Wilford tells the story of the Central Intelligence Agency’ s three musketeers in this absorbing account of romantics enchanted by Kiplingesque myths and the Lawrence of Arabia legend, who cynically harboured the self-contradictory ambition of democratizing the Arab world and Iran while arrogating all decisions to themselves.

. . .

When Copeland arrived in Damascus in 1947, Syria had an elected parliament and prime minister under a democratic constitution similar to that of the Third Republic in France. It did not take Copeland long to strike up a friendship with the Syrian Army’s chief of staff, the Kurdish Colonel Husni Zaim, and turn his thoughts to politics at a time when the civilian government was delaying a treaty to permit an American oil pipeline through its territory from Saudi Arabia and Jordan to Lebanon. Roosevelt had been cultivating what he called the “young effendis” and Copeland the “right kind of leaders” to drag the Arab world away from Britain and France and into the American century. Zaim seemed perfect. As Wilford writes, he told Copeland that there was “only one way to start the Syrian people along the road to progress and democracy”, pausing to slash at his desk with a riding crop, “with the whip”.

Worth a read. This story has been told many times, and in this book from Glass’ description it is told through the lens of CIA operatives being pro-democracy romantics. Dubious proposition to say the least...
J

Syria can be preserved by the subtle route of compromise | Charles Glass
►http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jul/29/syria-route-of-compromise

The choice confronting the world is not between the Assad regime and the opposition, but between two oppositions. One seeks international military intervention to enable it to overthrow the regime. The other strives for change through civil disobedience and dialogue and rejects military interference by foreign powers whose hostility to Syria pre-dates their recent discovery of the country’s woes.

As a civil war develops in Syria, reporters should not take sides
– Charles Glass
►http://www.charlesglass.net/archives/2012/03/as_a_civil_war.html

The line-up of foreign powers on the opposing sides is beginning to resemble the coalitions that destroyed Biafra 40 years ago. With the Assad regime are Russia, China, Iran, Iraq and Lebanon’s Hizbollah. The dissident factions are counting on the United States, Britain, France, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Libya and Al Qaeda. To this mix must be added a Syrian Sunni fundamentalist, Sheikh Adnan Al Arour. Sheikh Adnan appears regularly on television in Saudi Arabia to terrify Alawites, Ismailis, Kurds and Christians with the consequences of opposing the jihad against the regime.

Dissidents, journalists and mullahs who call for foreign forces to fight in Syria have only to look next door to Lebanon. During its long war, every foreign power that got involved burnt its fingers and escalated violence for the Lebanese. The Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) ostensibly responded to an appeal from Lebanon’s Sunni Muslims for help in obtaining equality with the Christians. When the PLO left in 1982, their movement was badly wounded and even the Sunnis were glad to see it go.

Syria intervened at various stages of the war on behalf of the Christians, the Palestinians and the Shiites. Its departure in April 2005 was welcomed by the vast majority of Lebanese.

Israel came in 1982 promising to help the Christians. When it left in 2000, not even the Christians had a good word for them. As for the US’s brief encounter with Lebanon in 1982-83, the less said, the better. Do the families of the 241 American service personnel killed in the suicide bombings of October 23, 1983, believe “the price was worth paying”?