Jeane Kirkpatrick

Speaking at the Middle East Forum on October 25, former American Ambassador to the United Nations Jeane Kirkpatrick lambasted the Clinton Administration for its failure to pressure Syria into withdrawing from Lebanon.

Kirkpatrick discussed the establishment of Syria's "death grip" on Lebanon in the late 1970's and the "elaborate protection rackets" of pro-Syrian militia leaders and politicians. "Democratic, tolerant, educated, cosmopolitan Lebanon . . . today ceases to exist," she said, because it had too many attackers and too few defenders" and confronted a "fundamentally indifferent" international community. "The United States permitted itself to be simply driven out by the combinations of the bombing of the marines [and] the bombing of our embassy by Hezbollah," which she said had strong Syrian backing.

Since then, she said, the US has increasingly acquiesced in Syrian control of the country in an apparent bid to coax Assad into making peace with Israel. US policymakers need "to be realistic about Syria," said Kirkpatrick. "Assad is as bloody, repressive, expansionist and outrageous a dictator as [any that] exists in the world . . . he has been from the beginning of his adventures in Lebanon, certainly."

The US government should "cease its almost embarrassing efforts to court Assad and to establish common ground with Assad--we don't have any common ground with Assad," she added. "He's the only formally designated leader of a terrorist state whom high-level officials of the American government will deal with and I think they should stop, unless or until he's prepared to change his policies."