well i would characterize the obama as a charismatic version of american exceptionalism.

the world. science technology innovation all the moves developments from around russia we've gone to the future of coverage. can't live. alone and welcome across town peter lavelle syria's bloody is again nato has ruled out any military operation against syria though this could change the bank's change on the ground can and will western powers succeed in overthrowing the current syrian regime without direct use of force and if there were to be regime change in syria what would replace it and how would the region's geopolitical dynamics change . can. live.

cross-talk the complicated case of syria i'm joined by samara roby in washington he's a foreign policy manager at the arab american institute in pittsburgh we have rick francona he is a middle east expert and author of how i to adversity and eye witness account of iraq's fall from grace and in chicago we crossed the answer to he's a member of the syrian national council all right gentlemen this is cross talk you can jump in anytime you want but first russia syria's experiences bloodiest day yes and it's been exactly eight months since it all started the u.n. says more than thirty five hundred people have been filled with thousands more injured yet there seems to be no plan to take military action to protect civilians and despite outside pressure to end the crackdown there's been no letup in violence the u.n. security council has been at odds over how to respond to the uprising despite continued pressure from the european union. the european union and will continue to press for strong u.n. action to increase international pressure and all members of the security council

to assume their responsibilities in relation to the situation in syria. the e.u. has already passed several rounds of sanctions against the assad regime but during a meeting on monday the british foreign secretary william hague was unequivocal about avoiding a repeat of the libya scenario calling syria a much more complex situation the reason for this is that a military intervention into syria could provoke a reaction from its allies and destabilize the entire middle east syria or like libya is part of an alliance and that i it's very wide it begins in iran some elements it walks government are part of the syrian regime has but not in love at all in gaza meanwhile the arab league has been pulling no punches as it has announced a decision to suspend syria's membership for failing to meet the terms of its peace plan a move that syria has fervently denounced. were surprised that the arab league had

already prepared a document which obviously came from american orders and they were asked to produce this document because serious positive response surprised them and their masters in america and the west. syria has also remain confident that china and russia would oppose a nice u.n. resolution to get militarily involved both countries have vetoed such a decision back in october the international community has gone to great lengths to draw a contrast between libya and syria mainly to avoid provoking iran because syria is much distance as you claim porton to rant regime could also mean we can make these lawmakers public itself so the stakes are high both sides of the fence ok first of all i'd like to go to yasser in chicago i mean considering what we just heard in march his report here and the news that became this come out as we sit down to do this program syria's experienced it's bloodiest day so can you convince me that it's not a civil war going on in syria it's definitely not a civil war the reality the fair's of international affairs is that the entire

world has their political calculations opened and left and you know the only people that are paying the price with their blood there with their souls and their lives are the syrian people on the ground the pro-democracy movement protesters that have been overwhelmingly peaceful i believe that the reference to a civil war is yet and when yes yes i can say with you here i mean how do you how do you counter your remarks made by the regime in damascus that its own security forces and members of its security forces are being killed as well i mean these people there's some people would least there are there are arms in getting better armed every single passing day hence my comment civil war. there's something called the free syrian army and those are the honorable soldiers that belong to the syrian army that refused to open fire and peaceful protestors and they're engaging in their in their original mandate in their rightful mandate of civilian protection

and they are you know they're members of the army their job their duty is to defend the syrian people to defend defend and defend the fence the civilians and that's exactly what they do when the fenceless civilians and protesters are being attacked brutally by security forces and by members of the assad militias of course they're going to fire back and of course they're going to be here for the present and so i hold that there's still the calculation of the nation of a civil war rick what do you think about that because before we have the international dimension here what is going on inside syria because there is a media blackout so there's a lot of questioning is what it's going on what's going on there right now. well i think i think you saw the beginnings of the civil war you seem to break down of order in the military so you've got fact is that a military that are loyal to the assad regime and you've got other factions that are siding with the people and as as yesterday says they're not going to fire on syrian civilians but it goes further than that what you're seeing is these army

defectors these ones are not going to follow orders from damascus actually taking up arms and starting fights with the syrian soldiers i mean we you look at the casualty figures over the last few days a lot of those casualties or in the syrian military not in the protesters so you're starting to see both sides use weapons lethal weapons against each other so yeah where this is going to devolve into a civil war if it's not stopped it's alright i mean we've got december first ok in washington here who are they who is the opposition taking their orders from do you see it as being engage in this we have discovered the outside of that made in istanbul i think yasser you're a member of that council i mean hoost who's calling the shots here is it inside of him is it inside i'm sorry is it inside the country or outside the country and if it's outside the country who is leading them who's paying them. that's a great question and it's actually a very difficult one to answer i think part of the problem is that we can't necessarily reify the entire opposition into a single entity right i don't think we've been able to identify exactly what motivates syrian protesters on the ground on

a case by case basis i mean there's no question that the syrian national council has some degree of legitimacy in syria they have some ability to draw support to draw demonstrators and that kind of thing but the extent to which it has managed to develop itself into the cohesive element of the opposition has yet to be determined i mean there's still a lot of action going on the ground maybe by local coordinating committees by different syrian groups by different syrian political parties that maybe a focus meaning the situation on the ground in ways that the s.n.c. isn't necessarily controlling i mean one of the unfortunate aspects of the syrian uprising is that it hasn't developed into a very cohesive opposition that has coalesced around a very specific set of political needs and demands and i think the s.n.c. is trying to do that now it's trying to develop itself into the solid i'm a representative of the syrian people but i don't think it's quite reached that stage and if it has you know as you mentioned the media blackout makes it very difficult for us to discern what the true motivations are of syrian protesters because of the which organizations they work with ok has reduced you and your organization speak for the syrian people. the syrian national council has been in

combination for the past eight months basically it took it took took us a few months to bring together an umbrella group that represents well over eighty percent of all opposition pro-democracy movement representation whether it's on the ground or outside of syria whether it's classical political or revolutionary and i think that was the reason that it took us a long time to establish the umbrella group that is now the us and see now i think that the fact that. you cannot that the cern because of a media blackout that's not necessarily mean that the s.n.c. is not it was a representative of the of the of the majority of the of the world movement on the ground in fact we've seen several manifestations of political popular support popular support whether it's in the forms of you know naming an entire friday the s.n.c. represents me. with protesters on the ground to the more recent

protests that we've seen over the past couple weeks that have gone in staunch opposition to the to the coordination commission if you go to really if i could reduce or a moment. if i go to record. what is the opposition for me what you understand and i understand you were based in damascus for a while is this a democracy movement or is this just the end regime that is very unpopular with some segments not all segments of syrian society. well i think that's the problem we don't know what it is it's probably a combination of all of those you don't have a cohesive unit united front like you had say in libya and that's causing a problem if you look at where the protests are occurring they're all over the country and so there's no there's no enclave that you can you can attach it to like in libya you had that you know the benghazi area was sort of the nucleus of the of the revolution there we were seeing in syria is this you know diverse activity from

different groups and i think the the essence he's trying to you know to organize that into a cohesive thing so i think they've got a long way to go and i think as they try and unite and coalesce into one organization you're going to see it maybe fragment more because i think you've got people with different agendas united by the common goal of getting rid of the acid regime but i don't know if they've got it you know a single goal that they're going to ok some of what do you think is i mean it's sort of the assad regime is it is it stays numbered or does it still have enough core backing to survive a much longer because there's so many different guesses out there about just how strong the regime is. i mean i think it's a question of to some extent impossible to answer and it's already proven much more resilient than people expected it to be but at the same token so has the syrian revolutionary movement i mean the uprisings have been much more powerful despite an unbelievable amount of repression from the funeral scene and really violence on

behalf of the syrian security forces have managed to continue to put pressure on the syrian regime but it's actually stay put which is something that's kind of remarkable. to some extent i think that it's kind of proof positive that the current international community's actions toward syria haven't necessarily been as effective as people had hoped they would be certainly of the opinion that the kind of sanctions regimes that were pushing on syria are necessarily benefiting the syrian people as much as people hope that it wouldn't necessarily be crippling the syrian government as much as we hope that it would mean in fact actually be producing counterproductive outcomes based on how the sanctions regime took in libya but you think about that yasser because there's so many of these so it's ok we got to you and then we'll go to the break go ahead rick ok yeah i think that's a very key point that he makes you know the resilience of both sides i mean if you look back at the series history and you go back to ninety two and i was absolutely shocked to see the syrian people come out in those numbers against

a government that they know is going to act just like it has and you know the son no different than the father has shown absolutely going to jump in here we're going to go to a short break and after that short break we'll continue our discussion on syrian state. practically a ghost town. squandered money. on . what is now. more than sixty square kilometers are being bombed from their mistakes and those

who are still surprising them live i'm finding we're just. spinning bad out here but not saying hardly any birds squirrels you know. you know i don't know what's going on here. concrete on the marquee. commission free accreditation free zones for judges three coming from and three. three stooges free. download free blog can play videos for your media projects and a free media don carty dot com. wealthy british.

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welcome back to crossfire computable to remind you we're talking about the situation in syria. ok yes i'd like to go back to you in chicago and kind of spread aside a little bit we talk about domestic issues going on in syria let's talk about the international dimension here i mean who benefits from all of the chaos going on inside syria is it iran is it saudi arabia is it israel we know very clearly the united states has a particular agenda about exporting democracy in the arab world in light of the fact that its state haters are falling left and right and that's actually a good thing historically what is in play in is is syria just

a pawn. you know i tend to stay away from these conspiracy theories and i'm not talking about conspiracy theories is plenty of evidence out there this is just overwhelmed to see iran's greatest ally in the region cake a bloody nose at least at this point and they're very happy to see that mostly congo has full law. so that's not a conspiracy theory that's real it's very real very there's there's there's plenty of evidence that the people who started this revolution on the grounds are are it's all started and smart with bunch of kids from the city of there are who basically were writing. and as a result they paid very dearly by them getting tortured and killed and mutilated i mean i think there is plenty of evidence to the reasons of this particular uprising i think for us to. basically have. you know international interest and

this i would go to. take on a life of a syria. it is a people ok rick if i can go to you what do you think about the international dimension i mean you know is gleeful about this and then we have the i.a.e.a. report on iran we have israel to attack iran i mean and then syria is right in the middle of all of this. you know syria i mean i think this is great i mean for if you're a saudi you're looking at this and think this is ok this is going to tie up iran this is going to remove their focus instead of being our primary you know rival in the persian gulf but i think iran has a lot to lose here in syria falls and they lose their access to his ball in lebanon that really hurts their foreign policy in the region so i think everybody's looking at this point and you know yasser right i mean this story with a bunch of kids and darrell but it did take on a life of its own and that's how it started really now is irrelevant because if this is now in the forefront and now you've got all these other countries looking

at what's going to happen there and this syria much more important in libya it ties in you've got nato to the north you know with with turkey being a member state you've got the israelis to the south lebanon to the north of his ball of course iran sitting over there much of the east ok sam if i'm going to you in washington. some of those very same earnest human how who benefits from all the chaos or regional question. that's a very important question but i think it's important and i think a lot of people fail to distinguish between the legitimacy of the uprising itself and the geneseo of the way the international players have interacted with the syrian uprising i mean there's no question that you know a lot of regional actors stand to gain a lot from a revolution in syria just like a lot of international actors and even regional players stand a lot to gain from maintaining the syrian regime both of those things are absolutely true neither of them detracts from the fact that. i think we can safely say that the overwhelming majority of syrian demonstrators simply want

a free prosperous and liberated syria that being said it's ok i feel like based on that to criticize certain elements of the opposition or to criticize the way that international actors have been involved in syria in no way that you legitimize the opposition itself. but questions the role that say saudi arabia might play questions the role that iran or israel or even the united states might play but let's listen in the way some would stop about the intervention here yasser how do you feel about an outside intervention and we already have sanctions here which punish the middle class doesn't necessarily punish the the regime itself but in other issues very well and then well i mean that's what a lot of people are saying ok also i mean it is sanctions usually go on for more of them somehow me what my my question is how would you feel about a military intervention intervention are the libyan scenario. look i think the situation in syria is such that you know the entire world has made it clear that they're not ready for any military intervention right now and we

syrians have come to recognize and realize very bitterly that if we have to do this . namely toppling the regime and entering an era of a free democratic civil police realistic syria we're going to have to do it on our own more or less with the support perhaps with of some friends and some some actors now i think that we need to stop the presumption that once the assad regime leaves you know the area will will basically mark into chaos i think that there are many many capable minds that that are part of the opposition that are coming together that are drawing him out for the future of syria and you know that will you know ensure a you know a syria that is good for the syrian people and that is good for the for the for the region nobody wants to go in the direction of chaos if not rick if i can ask you there's a lot of people saying that you know again if i can bring in the saudi angle here is that if you start ethnics to carry in strife between the shia and the in the

sunni and this is something that they like to turn on turn our but you can't always control it i think we remember the mujahideen from afghanistan. but but if you think that the assad regime going the way is going to lead to a syria that's better for the syrian people that depends on who you ask in syria that's good and that's why you see a lot of the sunni's standing up in supporting the us the regime and that's not you know let's turn out the let's turn out the demonstrations like the syrian government is capable of doing these are people that actually believe i talk a lot of people in syria and their biggest fear is that if the us the regime goes it just something they don't want they mostly fear in islamic cases and of course the muslim brotherhood so that's what that's what's driving a lot of a lot of the resistance in syria to the whole it is a very busy as it once was of the state and we're talking about such a pluralistic opposition that is functioning as

a dysfunctioning within this umbrella has been created to is not controlled by any any faction or any party i mean we have to keep you know we have to start talking about this this this is the scarecrow of the muslim brotherhood the scarecrow you have it is aimed it was hammered out of a state i think it is you didn't hear i mean i'm not convinced at all that there is democracies on the march in syria ok i mean i do this absolutely no evidence of it at all except there's a lot of violence on both sides with protesters with their arms and they're getting better armed every single day that's how i started out the program as a civil war so summer i mean is this thing goes on if i go back to washington i mean how likely are we going to get a jeffersonian democracy in syria. it's not inconceivable i still stand by the fact that yes absolutely the protests have gotten increasingly violent but that's the response of the violence of the regime almost no question. the syrian people and i think the vast overwhelming majority of the syrian people simply want a free and democratic stable syria. but the steps to get there are complicated

steps i think it's possible that syria will reach some kind of happy democratic state but they certainly won't reach a democratic state under the assad regime it will be a long and very painful process to get there but i think the thing that we really need to remember the middle road that we have to that we have to attack here is that the end goal is not a syria without bush other the third goal is a free and prosperous syria and the elimination of the show that it is a necessary but not sufficient step towards that goal it's important that we maintain certain kind of. watchfulness and pressure on the syrian opposition movement to make sure that they do produce something that's that's conducive to producing a viable strong democracy in the long term and that's not necessarily what's going to come out of these revolutions right and this comes back to the international intervention question the good the regional players don't necessarily have a stake in producing a free and democratic syria and that's problematic it's a very good point if i can if i could ask rick here if i could ask you why you think that's a very interesting point here if i could talk to you what should the international

community be doing because i think there's a lot of frustration. among members of the opposition and certainly the people that are guiding in syria want more what should be done should be repeat the libyan scenario as i mentioned earlier. well both say here's what should be done and what can be done to different things what should be done is some sort of protection regime for the civilians in syria and if you want to hasten the overthrow of the assad regime which might be in the foreign policy interests of several regional players and as well as well as the united states saudi arabia but what can be done syria and libya totally different situations you look the logistics of it the you know the tactical operational scenarios you have to use yes you have a nato country there but i don't i don't think you could exert enough force to create the the protection regime you want and also you've got this this fighting spread out all over syria you've got all these pockets you have to protect i think militarily it is it is it would be very very difficult and i don't see nato nato

stepping up to the plate and if nato doesn't do it i don't see any other combination of countries that will do it i know what should be done but i'm afraid that won't be done yes or do you have confidence that the region can resolve this issue here because i think most people would agree with rick is that nato just doesn't have the stomach right now for another adventure in the arab world. well well i think that the arab league has taken a look first step i mean late as that as it may be but it's a very good first step in lifting the political cover of the syrian regime and i think that the u.n. security council including russia has been waiting for and china has been waiting for that moment the slights the recent you know announcements by the russian foreign minister i believe that the russians are coming to realize that what's taking place in syria is something that they cannot just sit idly and watch and i think that you know i hate it i hate you know i mean it's china and russia if

you're going to do our security with china and russia i just make it very clear to my viewers don't want to see international law abused again like it was in the libyan case sammer if i can go to you you think it went down this path you're going to go in the case of syria before is. because that was a legal fly zone when the syrian government is even using planes against these protesters some are if i can end the program on with what you're saying about the process and we'll use them in the washington for i always will i would you like to see asian the international community do. again that's not an easy question but obviously we'd like to see the international community help the syrian i'm giving these an easy answer also see the problem is i'm sorry the problem is that the international community doesn't have the legitimacy right now to interact with . the syrian revolutionaries in a way that helps promote democracy i mean we've specially the western world and us in particular have kind of shattered our legitimacy in the region i mean the arab american institute actually conducted a poll i'm sorry gentlemen we're out of time

a very interesting discussion i want to thank all of my guests today in pittsburgh chicago and in washington and thanks for viewers for watching us here at the phoenix time and remember crosstalk. ok. to. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear or see some other part of it and realized everything you thought you knew you don't i'm sorry mark it was a big picture. well

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