Fashion as Political Cover - Assad Is So Out of Vogue

Assad Is So Out of Vogue - Clifford D. May - National Review Online

DECEMBER 27, 2012  But the spring season in Syria is likely to be ghastly as well. By Clifford D. May It seems like only yesterday Bashar al-Assad was being courted by progressive Western politicians even as he conspired with Iranian jihadists and Kremlin strongmen. And it was less than two years ago that Anna Wintour, editor of Vogue and comandante of the fashionistas, was celebrating Syrian first lady Asma al-Assad as “a rose in the desert,” whose “style is not the couture-and-bling dazzle of Middle Eastern power but a deliberate lack of adornment . . . a thin, long-limbed beauty with a trained analytic mind who dresses with cunning understatement.” The Syrian dictator has yet to be pried from power, but with the Kremlin sending war ships for a possible evacuation of Russian citizens, it may not be long before the Assads are passé. That’s good news, isn’t it? In the Middle East, “yes” and “no” are rarely correct answers. We can say this: Assad’s downfall would be preferable to Assad’s survival. As U.S. Central Command chief General James N. Mattis told Congress last March, regime change in Syria would represent “the biggest strategic setback for Iran in 25 years.” And Iran — ruled by a regime that is building nuclear weapons, has plotted terrorism from Buenos Aires to Georgetown, threatens Israel with genocide, and proclaims jihad against the “Great Satan” — is unquestionably the free world’s most vexing challenge. -go to link-