Fred Hof on Syria

Fred  Hof is presently a Senior Fellow at the Rafik Hariri center for the Middle East at the Atlantic Council.  Parenthetically, Rafik Hariri and his son Saad were/are Sunni Lebanese politicians with deep ties to the royal family of Saudi Arabia.  IMO, the Hariris have always been implacably hostile to the Alawi dominated government in Damascus.  It seems reasonable to assume that Hariri money funds the Hariri Center.

It is an infrequent event when a tinkerer with history and people's lives comes out of the shadows and into the light so that the the population can see for themselves who the Borgist dwarves are and have some idea of what they have wrought.

 I have a lot of history with Hof.  I have known him for something like 30 years.  I first met him when he was an Army LTC or major serving as assistant army attaché in the US embassy in Beirut during the Lebanese Civil War.  He was shot by someone among the many "player" groups at a road block in Beirut while driving.  I handled his evacuation and wrote him up for a Purple Heart for the wound.  I was then the DIA manager for a number of ME attaché posts. 

It seems to have been during his adventure in Beirut that Hof developed a virulent hostility toward the Syrian government.  The Syrians then had 30,000 odd troops in Lebanon at the request of the Arab League.  They were there supposedly to try to referee among the Lebanese sectarian and political factions, but clearly they enjoyed the experience of lording it over the Lebanese, especially Lebanese politicians and played that role with a swaggering crudeness that was unwise.  Syria finally withdrew its forces from Lebanon after the death of Assad pere, and the accession to power of Assad fils.

In the diplomatic community of Beirut and among the Lebanese upper classes during the Syrian semi-occupation, the opinion was generally held that the Syrians, their army and police were the lowest of the low and that Hafez al-Assad was the guiding spirit in all this evilness.  The Americans on post in Beirut were more or less besieged in the embassy and became subscribers to this idea set through constant association with the moneyed Lebanese they had access to.  These people bitterly resented the attitude that the Syrian "occupiers" displayed toward them.  The same anti-Syrian perspective permeated the larger network of diplomats, media, academics, think tankers, erc. throughout the world.  This was part of a general attitude among the foreign policy intelligentsia of the West concerning existing governments in the Arab countries.  The FP intelligentsia professed to believe that the autocrats; Mubarak, Assad, Saddam, etc. were the worst thing imaginable and that they personally were responsible for all the ills that afflicted the various states of the ME.  The belief somehow was common among the FP intelligentsia that if the rulers could be removed and replaced with locals who professed to admire Western values, all would be well.  Well, we have seen how badly flawed that idea really was.  In Iraq, Egypt, Syria, what happened was that the more or less secular autocrats were removed from power and the raging demonic passions of sectarian fury were released when they were no longer suppressed.

Hof was eventually assigned to be the military assistant (aide) of Richard Armitage, then Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs (ISA).  In other words, he sat in Armitage's outer office as gate keeper.  I was then the senior Middle East/South Asia person in DIA and of necessity spent a lot of time working with Hof and others among Armitage's staff.  I found Hof to be very aggressive, disdainful of others' opinions and increasingly willing to throw Armitage's weight around.  Politically, I would have described him as a liberal internationalist who shared the belief common in those circles that the ME badly needed reform.  Hof retired from the Army as a LTC.  He followed Armitage into the consulting world of Washington where he was made a partner in Armitage's company.  He and Armitage were appointed to negotiate several international problems including one for sharing the waters of the Yarmuk river among Jordan, Syria and Israel.  The Yarmuk is a stream that one can wade across just about anywhere.

Hof next appeared in the Obama Administration where he worked as a consultant on Syria policy.  It appears to me that he has been one of the leading cheerleaders and policy drivers for regime change in Syria.  In this oped piece he seems to me to mock both Obama and Kerry for their lack of resolve in getting rid of Bashar Assad.

Well, pilgrims, they deserve it for listening to him.  pl 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/obama-and-kerrys-wishful-thinking-on-syria/2015/12/11/94bbcc90-92f1-11e5-a2d6-f57908580b1f_story.html

 

Comments

[gemini33]

Obama at the Pentagon just said he sent Sec Carter to the Middle East "to secure more military contributions to this fight."

[turcopolier]

gemini33

good. We will count them when they show up. pl

[turcopolier]

walter

You have actually discovered that people want to make money! You are boring. pl

[turcopolier]

Robert Willman

I don't care what some half assed writer created. I actually know what happened, but, in this case the material supports my knowledge of the event of the meeting. pl

[Jack]

Sir

In your opinion what is the motivation of a person like Hof.

[turcopolier]

jack

Self serving Type A obsession. He has a history of eliminating imagined rivals. pl

[BostonB]

Sanders also supported arming the "rebels" in Libya.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2015/10/03/bernie-sanders-sides-with-obama-and-against-clinton-on-no-fly-zone-in-syria/

“We must be very careful about not making a complex and dangerous situation in Syria even worse,” Sanders said in a statement to The Washington Post. “I support President Obama’s efforts to combat ISIS in Syria while at the same time supporting those in that country trying to remove the brutal dictatorship of Bashar Assad.”

[Chris Chuba]

"I was intimately familiar with the equipment inventory of the Iraqi forces. they had virtually no US manufactured equipment"

I got the reference from here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Iraq_War#1988:_Iraqi_offensives_and_the_UN_ceasefire that Iraq was able to get U.S. made Howitzers through Jordan. However, I accept your answer as authoritative on this matter over a Wikipedia entry, that Iraq had a negligible quantity of U.S. weapons.

"We did not give them intelligence to help in their chemical
weapons delivery. Quite the opposite, we told them that if they used what target intelligence we gave to deliver chemical weapons the programs would end."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/26/us-gave-iraq-intel-ignored-chemical-attacks_n_3817868.html
According this reference and I found others that referenced battles starting around Basra in 1987, the U.S. supplied intelligence and the Iraqi's launched large chemical weapons attacks through 1988 inflicting large losses. Were there any repercussions for misusing our intelligence?

I'm not Iranian; my interest began when I heard Republicans assert that we should never negotiate with the Iranians because they have blood on their hands. I thought this was a small minded view for Presidential candidates to take because we should look to the future rather than perpetuate blood feuds. I recalled that we got our pound of flesh so I read up on the matter. Our role in Iran/Iraq should be properly understood. It looks like Iraq used chemical weapons in all of their major engagements in 1988 so for us to not be not be involved at all would require us to have severed our intelligence relationship with them almost completely by then. However, even one attack with our intelligence puts us in the mix.

[turcopolier]

chris Chuba

We provided no intelligence for the Iraqi offensive on the Fao Peninsula which must be what you refer to in the Basra area. Yes, the Iraqis used gas there in their fire preparation along with HE. What has that to do with us? I am impressed with the corruption and falseness of what is called scholarship. I have had this problem with "scholars" of the VN War who have insisted that I did not know what I was talking about because I had not read some academic jerk's article. What are you, the Guardian Angel of the Iranians? There was a war on and the US decided to yield to the entreaties of SA to try to prevent a possible Iraqi defeat. If that does not satisfy you,go screw yourself. Do you imagine that I do not grieve for the dead, the actual dead and maimed as opposed to the academical dead? Have you ever smelled a recent battlefield with the dead rotting in the sun? They fart a lot as their bellies swell. pl

[MRW]

Excellent post, CP.

[Babak Makkinejad]

I have heard from various sources that the civilians cannot bear to hear all that was done to the Iranian POWs by the Iraqis.

Therefore some memoirs are not allowed to be published or had sections of them excised.

[Will]

Rand Paul