Syria and our foreign policy.

• Author: Schindler, Sol

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Aside from being a vacuous oxymoron leading from behind is a path to suicide. No leader has ever boasted of his prowess by being in the rear. If a leader wishes success he must show himself whereever action is thickest so that all elements know that a supervising intelligence leads. In the events developing from the Arab Spring in the mid-East we clearly see how essential it is that one does not speak (from the rear) to express one's emotion but rather airs the plans of action under consideration from a leading position. It is meaningless for an administration spokesman to say that he is outraged by the bloodshed in Syria and then move on to another subject. He is obliged, if he wishes any credence, to elaborate on how his outrage will affect the course of future events. If he cannot tell his listeners that, they will eventually stop listening to him. Certainly that point has now been reached in Syria.

President Obama, Secretary Clinton, and other administration spokesmen have expressed their outrage at the massacres taking place in Syria and have urged Bashir al Assad to step down so that meaningful peace negotiations can take place. Mr. Assad, as many predicted, has not even acknowledged these remarks and is now receiving arms and soldiers trained in their use from Iran and other known sources. The eighteen-month-old civil war grows deadlier each month and no end appears in sight. What is to be done?

There is much we can do if we find the resolve. First we should follow the advice of Jeanne Kirkpatrick and remove the kick me signs from the backs of our representatives abroad. This will engender a healthy atmosphere in which frank and open discussions can take place. Unfortunately, as events have shown, the kick me sign is still in place. When our Ambassador to the United Nations insists that the murder of our Ambassador to Libya, on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, was the result of spontaneous outage at an American film made by an Egyptian Copt which hardly anyone has seen one realizes that public statements made by prominent government officials are tailored to conform to doctrine rather than reality. True, after a few days the Administration admitted it was a kind of a terrorist act. Nevertheless, we don't dare say our enemies hate us. To do so would shatter our dreamy construct of a peaceful, loving world.

The Syrian government has long been our enemy. During the Clinton administration the senior Assad kept Secretary of...