Sharona Schwartz
The Blaze
12/16/2012
With multiple reports circulating that President Barack Obama will nominate Sen. John Kerry to be his next secretary of state, it’s worth remembering the praise the Democratic senator has in the past heaped on Syrian President Bashar Assad — worthwhile since dealing with Assad’s crumbling regime and the militant Islamists who threaten it will likely be the top item on his foreign policy agenda if he takes office.
It wasn’t so long ago that Kerry made repeated pilgrimage to Syria, meeting with Assad five times between 2009 and 2011. Last year, he famously used the adjective “generous” to describe Assad, as the Wall Street Journal’s Bret Stephens recalled in a column this past summer:
On March 16, 2011—the day after the first mass demonstration against the regime—John Kerry said Assad was a man of his word who had been “very generous with me.” He added that under Assad “Syria will move; Syria will change as it embraces a legitimate relationship with the United States.” This is the man who might be our next secretary of state.
As Michael Rubin recently wrote in Commentary Magazine, Kerry’s staffers described “their collective cringe when, after a motorcycle ride with Bashar al-Assad, he returned to Washington referring to Bashar as ‘my dear friend.’”…
…If Kerry is confirmed as secretary of state, questions remain: What words will he use to describe Assad now that nearly 40,000 have been killed in the country’s 21-month conflict? Will Kerry continue to pressure Israel to give up the Golan Heights?
In light of Kerry’s history of appeasing Assad, will Susan Rice’s congressional opponents rue the day the United Nations ambassador took her name out of the running?
The complete article is at The Blaze.
Update: Heh! NYCTiCRoNYBuS KeRRY DiSCoVeReD…
Update 2: Obama Passes Conservative Blogosphere Full Employment Act
“Source: Obama has chosen John Kerry as Secretary of State.”
If true, as I wrote the other day, the sixties are now complete: A president supported by an ex-Weatherman and the New Black Panthers might as well have a Winter Soldier in his cabinet for the complete Radical Chic Meets Geritol experience. If only Leonard Bernstein was still around to savor the moment.
Update: “A while ago, The Daily Caller reported that, as a student at Columbia University, Eric Holder participated in an armed takeover of the University’s former ROTC office.”
