{"id":152,"date":"2014-08-30T21:17:23","date_gmt":"2014-08-30T21:17:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/?p=152"},"modified":"2014-08-30T21:41:17","modified_gmt":"2014-08-30T21:41:17","slug":"hollandes-syria-comments-evil-or-stupid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2014\/08\/hollandes-syria-comments-evil-or-stupid.html","title":{"rendered":"Hollande&#8217;s Syria comments: evil or stupid?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center\"><em>Bachar al-Assad est l&#8217;alli\u00e9 objectif des jihadistes<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">Bashar al-Assad is the de facto ally of the jihadists (fighting to oust him)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><strong>Francois Hollande<\/strong><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">Normally, I preface my posts on this blog with something wise from great French politicians and scholars, which signify the traditional\u00a0place of France at the heart of\u00a0all political history as a result of\u00a0the French Revolution. However, today I feel a quote demonstrating incredible stupidity is necessary.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Fran\u00e7ois Hollande : &quot;Assad ne peut pas \u00eatre un partenaire de la lutte contre le terrorisme&quot;\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/x41QvM5fiME?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">In Syria, dictator Bashar al-Assad is fighting essentially the same battle being waged by pro-Western dictators Sisi in Egypt and Hiftar in Libya, yet the some Western states are\u00a0incapable of seeing the resemblance so they\u00a0insist al-Assad is a different creature, whose opposing Islamists are benign and democratic. So they\u00a0support the military\u00a0regimes\u00a0in Egypt and Libya, yet oppose the military regime\u00a0in Syria, for no reason at all other other than their own prior idiocy and bad judgment on the Syrian regime&#8217;s survivability. In other words, for the West, Syria is no longer about democracy but about making the West not looking as dumb\u00a0as it actually is. Now, however, French President Francois Hollande has come up with the even crazier alternative: both sides in the war\u00a0are evil&#8230;\u00a0and (because he doesn&#8217;t like either of them) they are &#8230;<em>allies<\/em>!!?!<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">Either Francois Hollande is involved in <a title=\"Doublethink: Wikipedia\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Doublethink\" target=\"_blank\">Orwellian doublethink<\/a> to believe that the enemies of Assad are simultaneously the allies of Assad (all the while his is the side giving them direct material and propaganda support by supporting the insurgency in Syria) or he is too stupid to hold office. Either\u00a0he\u00a0thinks the French people are too stupid to see that it is not al-Assad, but Hollande, who supports terrorism in Syria, or he is so ill-informed\u00a0that he does not understand <em>who is fighting who<\/em>\u00a0in Syria.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">To <em>really<\/em> believe that al-Assad is allied to the violent terrorists fighting against him (who are actually getting their\u00a0vast quantities of funding and other support from Western allies like France) would mean\u00a0Hollande has been kicked\u00a0so hard in the head that his ability to\u00a0speak after it at all astonishing.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" lang=\"en\"><p>Did <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/fhollande\">@fhollande<\/a> really say that <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Presidency_Sy\">@Presidency_Sy<\/a> &#8220;est l&#8217;alli\u00e9 de facto des djihadistes&#8221;? So real expression should be &#8220;my enemy is my friend&#8221;?<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Harry J. Bentham (@hjbentham) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hjbentham\/statuses\/505003840664772608\">August 28, 2014<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">I am quite sure that my next article <a title=\"My space at Press TV\" href=\"http:\/\/www.presstv.com\/Contributors\/323344.html\" target=\"_blank\">at Press TV<\/a> will address the Syrian crisis, in particular how some Western powers try to shirk responsibility for the calamity happening there and still act as if they are a civilizing presence, when they actually stirred up and justified all the violence in the first place in the name of the\u00a0creepy Neocon dream of forcefully imposing\u00a0&#8220;democracy&#8221;.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">By <a title=\"Harry J. Bentham's file at ClubOfINFO Circulation\" href=\"http:\/\/www.clubof.info\/search\/label\/Harry_J_Bentham\" target=\"_blank\">Harry J. Bentham<\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-41\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/375\/2014\/08\/HJB-Signature-and-stamp-300x169.jpg\" alt=\"HJB Signature and stamp\" width=\"200\" height=\"113\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bachar al-Assad est l&#8217;alli\u00e9 objectif des jihadistes Bashar al-Assad is the de facto ally of the jihadists (fighting to oust him) Francois Hollande Normally, I preface my posts on this blog with something wise from great French politicians and scholars, which signify the traditional\u00a0place of France at the heart of\u00a0all political history as a result&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":577,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46,68,71,86,37,72,67,66,16,56,69],"tags":[1490,48,2,1489,83,31,73,84,85,28],"class_list":["post-152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alter-globalization","category-conflict-2","category-conflict-resolution","category-france","category-history","category-international-relations","category-middle-east","category-politics-2","category-press-tv","category-uk","category-violence","tag-france","tag-harry-j-bentham","tag-lordre","tag-middle-east","tag-nato","tag-new-cold-war","tag-syria","tag-ukraine","tag-violence-2","tag-war"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Hollande&#039;s Syria comments: evil or stupid? - L&#039;Ordre<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2014\/08\/hollandes-syria-comments-evil-or-stupid.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Hollande&#039;s Syria comments: evil or stupid? - L&#039;Ordre\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Bachar al-Assad est l&#8217;alli\u00e9 objectif des jihadistes Bashar al-Assad is the de facto ally of the jihadists (fighting to oust him) Francois Hollande Normally, I preface my posts on this blog with something wise from great French politicians and scholars, which signify the traditional\u00a0place of France at the heart of\u00a0all political history as a result&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2014\/08\/hollandes-syria-comments-evil-or-stupid.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"L&#039;Ordre\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2014-08-30T21:17:23+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2014-08-30T21:41:17+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/files\/2014\/08\/HJB-Signature-and-stamp-300x169.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Harry J. 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Bentham","description":"Harry J. Bentham is a British futurist blogger who has been a contributor at a number of think tanks including the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies since 2013. His work at Press TV and the L'Ordre blog featured at the multi-faith Beliefnet website has gained increasing attention and praise, including in the international media. Commentaries on political and ethical controversies by Bentham have been published at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, H+ Magazine, Dissident Voice and numerous other publications. He edits The clubof.info Blog (http:\/\/www.clubof.info\/search\/label\/Harry_J_Bentham).","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Harry-J.-Bentham\/e\/B00D4MSEY0\/"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/author\/hbentham"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/577"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=152"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":161,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152\/revisions\/161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}