How the fate of Syria’s al-Assad divides the GOP Field: Cruz, Trump, Rubio
Donald Trump is against overthrowing al-Assad, on the grounds that the Syrian opposition that might replace him is full of unknowns. Indeed, Trump wants to just turn Syria over to Russian president Vladimir Putin.
Dr. Victoria C. Gardner Coates, Cruz’s foreign policy adviser, ... wants to revive Jeanne Kirkpatrick’s distinction between authoritarian leaders and totalitarian ones, and apply it to Syria. Just as Kirkpatrick thought that Jimmy Carter was wrong to turn on Latin American dictators (and so implicitly to aid leftist movements like the Sandinistas), so Coates and Cruz think that the US should leave Bashar al-Assad in power. Overthrowing al-Assad, they argue, would just allow jihadi groups like Daesh (ISIS, ISIL) and al-Qaeda to sweep into Damascus. So the priority has to be destroying Daesh; if al-Assad survives, so be it. Cruz told the Heritage Foundation, “For as bad as [President Bashar al-]Assad was and is, radical jihadis patrolling Syria would be a significant turn for the worse.”
One problem here is that Kirkpatrick would certainly have seen the Baath Party in Syria as totalitarian and not just authoritarian. Another problem is that Kirkpatrick was just wrong.
Rubio’s approach to Syria is World War III. He plans a multinational army of invasion to conquer al-Raqqa province in the East. ... Rubio’s insistence on what is essentially an American invasion of Syria to overthrow al-Assad, which apparently would make the Washington Post editors happy, derives in some important respects from corrupt casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, also one of the forces behind Israeli PM Binyamin Netanyahu.
http://www.juancole.com/2016/01/how-the-fate-of-syrias-al-assad-divides-the-gop-field-cruz-trump-rubio.html
Do Trump and Cruz disagree about anything at anytime?
