: re: To Crush ISIS, Make a Deal With Assad

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Mon, Sep 15, 2014 at 9:51 PM
Subject: re: To Crush ISIS, Make a Deal With Assad
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

    Starting from the false dichotomy that one is either for ISIS or against it, Ahmad Samih Khalidi proceeds to the false conclusion that the U.S. would be well-served to hop into bed with Bashar al-Assad.   We have nearly as many potential allies arrayed against ISIS (including simultaneously Saudi Arabia and Iran!) as there are factions wanting al-Assad dead.  al-Assad would be the least valuable to our cause, not least because to embrace him would be to alienate more puisant allies.

   We cannot require that our political allies be mirrors of ourselves. Certainly e.g. we owe Stalin's Soviet Union a great deal for carrying the brunt of fighting in WWII. But neither to we have to embrace this particular monster.

   By self-segregating, ISIS's fighters have purified other forces in the area of exactly the elements the U.S. couldn't back. Do let's succor the Kurds and the Yazidis and the Lebanese, and Shia across the region from ISIS atrocities. But let's not embrace one monster just because he's our enemy's enemy.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/16/opinion/to-crush-isis-make-a-deal-with-assad-.html?_r=0