This letter of mine was in the Sunday Globe, June 15, 2014
To the Editor:
Syria’s recent
balloting may have been a “sham,” as the Globe writes (“Assad’s new swagger requires a stepped-up response by US,”
Editorial, June 8), but so was the electoral anointing of Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi
in Egypt. The difference is that our government has supplied and continues to
send billions of dollars in US taxpayer funds to an Egyptian military that
oppresses its own people, while it cynically arms anti-Assad rebels in Syria in
the name of so-called democracy.
In the latter
case, we do so in alliance with dictatorial clerical regimes in the Arabian
Peninsula — Saudi Arabia and Qatar — that are funding Islamist militias and Al
Qaeda fanatics with the goal of imposing fundamentalist religious rule on
Syria’s multicultural society. Is it any wonder that millions of Syrians have
voted to support the authoritarian regime of Bashar Assad when the alternative
appears to be a victory for those who threaten to behead “apostates” and
secularists? The “moderate” military opposition that you cite never had the
possibility to overthrow Assad, and now it barely exists on the ground.
Isn’t it time to
reevaluate our alliances in the Middle East rather than rush headlong into
doubling down on a policy that has already led to 9/11 and might produce more
unanticipated disasters?
Jeff Klein
Dorchester
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