witnessed also the emergence of major cleavages with the opposition. the assassination, brutal, cold assassination of weren t of the top military commanders of the rebels by a rebel unit tells you a great deal about the lack of unity in the opposition of the rebels and also it tells you a great deal about how ga doff hey been able to survive for as long as he has in the last six months. all right. fawaz and reva, thanks for the lightning tour. we ll spend more time on the israeli/palestinian question which obviously is not going away way. thanks for sharing your thoughts today. ed president is focused on jobs but will the crises over seas throw another wrench in his plans? and shouldn t he be able to walk and chew gum at the same time? we ll talk about that next. coming up on hardball, iowa fight night. the battle between the two leaders of the republican party. uh, forgot jack s cereal. [ jack ] what s for breakfast? um.
joining us is fawaz, director of the middle east center at the london school of economics. thanks for being with us. good morning. on your home turf in london. but this is certainly a very devofrling situation in syria right now. how pe teotent would the steppip of u.s. sanctions or the un which are issuing condemnation letters to syria, what impact does that have on that nation? the international community response is very important in terms of the ledge plasy, the isolation of the regime, but the reality is events in syria will determine what will happen and the end results. syrians will determine whether the regime stays or goes. the reality been a clear shift, bashar al assad has decided he s going to put down these protests, not seed more ground? you re absolutely correct. obviously the regime has decided to crush the protesters, to silence the opposition. he s using massive force in
shape, or form, mark ginsburg is a former am bass do to morocco and presidential adviser to the middle east. he joins us from washington. good to see you, thanks for being with us. i think you heard fawaz in his discussion there. to the casual observers who doesn t have the expertise you have and fawaz has, you have to be wondering, what to they think in washington where we move into libya and we do what we re doing there and everybody seemed to think at the time that made sense but they re doing worse to their own people in syria and as fawaz said no likelihood of u.s. or possibly western involvement. why? because in the end, we ve already imposed significant economic sanctions that congress mandated against syria in 2006. it remains the only arab country deemed a state sponsor of terror and at the same time, this would be appealing to your particular area of expertise, the entire economy of syria is about the size of a medium sized u.s. city and so between sanctions already
since the american intervention in the gulf during, after saddam hussein invaded kuwait has been on foreign policy. of course, the war in afghanistan and iraq since 9/11. that is why you ve had a great deal of tensions, because the focus has been on foreign policy. i would argue now, in particular in the last few months, the focus now is not on foreign policy. the revolutions that are sweeping the arab world and the middle east are domestic oriented. they re about freedom, about personal liberties. they re about bread and butter. that s why i would argue, i would tell my american citizens, my fellow citizen, is that for the first time in the last 20 years, the agenda of the united states and al jazeera are the same. it s about democracy. it s about promoting a free flow of information and i m delighted now that the focus has shifted from foreign policy to domestic politics and internal politics in the arab world. understood. quickly, good for america, ben? beautiful for america.
al jazeera has been playing a critical role in the democratization process, unwittingly and consciously. in fact, i would argue, dylan, al jazeera is one of the most powerful nonstate actors in the world today. in fact, in tunisia, the first spark, provided the spark that ignited the fires in the middle east. people were saying, thank you, thank you, al ja deer zeerjazee. barack obama s ideas and symbolism play a critical part for this generation. al jazeera has been able to tell the people what s happened in their own societies. it has connected them together, it has really unleashed this particular longing for freedom and liberty and for open societies in the middle east. fawaz, reconcile for us, if you could, for the american point of view, who it is that owns this network, who is roger