With the focus in Syria more on the incipient civil war than any calls for a negotiated settlement, Syrian President Bashar Assad surprised everyone by announcing a nationwide referendum on February 26.
The referendum would be for a new constitution that would revise significant sources of tension with the initial pro-democracy protest movement. It would allow political parties other than the Ba’athists to potentially rule and promise a more serious effort at freedom of speech.
The US, as is to be expected, angrily condemned the referendum, saying it was “quite laughable” and “makes a mockery” of the ongoing revolution. The State Department insisted that if Assad “really cares” he would resign immediately.
In many ways the US rejection is neither here nor there, but it points to international opposition to any reform process on general principle, and means that those pushing the FSA and other armed factions on their conflict will probably keep pushing no matter what the future brings.
But,but…….. that would be democracy at work! Can't have that, unless it's US approved 'democracy'.
There is absolutely nothing Assad and Syria can do to appease the warmongers running shop in Babylon-On-The-Potomac. Well maybe if Assad Jr. and all his underlings were to commit ritual seppuku live on al-Jazeera, that might work for a minute or so. Of course, after that the Obamaites would still rain bunker busting madness on Damascus just for effect.
Got to keep Bibi comfy and all war cozy.
I'm sure if Assad would just let Zionists infiltrate every aspect of his government, intelligence apparatus, and law enforcement agencies he'd be turned into a MSM hero.
"The State Department insisted that if Assad “really cares” he would resign immediately”, this is personal rather being a political statement by US and I am sure that EU will follow the trend.
If what US and EU demand is about democracy in Syria then here it is and Assad is presenting it, not to US nor EU governments but rather to Syrian people which part of democracy is the freedom of political parties and freedom of expressions, freedom of speech and other related social political issues which mostly is about to become part of the "past democracy" in US and EU. But if US and EU demand is about regime change then they want to have their own regime based on their falsified democracy implemented in Syria and elsewhere; therefore, the people of Syria have no say but to obey US and EU unrealistic “democratic" demands . So where is democracy in all that talks about democracy in Middle East, is US and EU are afraid of having a people democracy competing with Israel which US and EU insist is a “democratic government" yet the government of Israel operates as an apartheid regime in practical terms, or US and EUs democracy is yet another faked rhetorics about democracy itself. More so the build up by US and EU militarism regime in the gulf proves the fact that they are there to protect their political and economic interests rather being interested in democracy.
Regime change, regime change, regime change, it's like a broken record.
Democracy is okay only when the results support the position of the West. Northern Kosovo, Syria, Egypt, etc. have no right to determine by vote the majority opinion of their people when the results will embarrass Western nations and, in particular, the USA. Look what democratic rule by Hamas has done for the Palestinians and Shiite majority rule in Iraq has done for the Iraqis? And yes, western relationships with Israel drive the bizarre actions of supposedly advanced Western democracies. Is there no rational way out of our current mess?
the US wants to bring down the syrian regime and install a puppet dictator to make up for the loss of mubarak in egypt. they dont give a damn if syria is democratic or not. They certainly dont care if every syrian is killed or not
what is really laughable is calling the opposition international, the opposition is US plus whoever thay can bribe or threaten.
I didn't think the U.S. government would be happy with the idea, but I didn't expect them to be so blatant about it.
Great Britain just demanded that Abraham Lincoln resign on the grounds
that he's killing his own people.
typical hypocrisy from a nation that invaded Saddams Iraq based on the lies that he had WMDs that they could use against us in 45 minutes but years before vetoed 2 UN resolutions calling on Saddam to stop using US made WMDs against Iranians!!!
What total f-ing hypocrisy
Where does the U.S. get off telling Syria what to do?
The worst outcome for the MIC, military brass and foreign policy punditry would be for Syria to achieve some stability. War is the business of these people. Instability and terrorism expands the the market. Saleh in Yemen has known this and done what he could to help and profit personally from these policies. See Jeremy Scahill's article in the Nation: http://www.thenation.com/article/166265/washingto…