Asad Interview with Charlie Rose (Aired March 27, 2006)
The full transcript of President Asad's interview with Charlie Rose, which was shown Monday on PBS is now up at SANA.
Addendum: It can be viewed in its entirety here.
The President did fairly well. I did not see the show, which does not allow me to read his body language, which is often as important as the actual words.
He criticized US policy in Iraq severely, claiming America was sinking into the Iraqi swamp. This is no longer shocking to an American audience that has become accustomed to the notion that the US is failing in Iraq. He did the right thing in insisting that Syria wants better relations with the US, the most technically advanced and powerful country in the world. And tried to explain Syrian support for Hizbullah and Hamas, organizations Washington considers terrorist.
The low point of the interview was Asad's response to Rose's questions about the Holocaust. Asad was evasive. Here is the exchange.
President Assad: If you ask many people in the region they would say to you that the West exaggerated the Holocaust. People say there was a Holocaust but they exaggerated it.When Asad said, "I don’t have any clue how many were killed or how they were killed," he enrages an American audience. He should have found out how many were killed by now. He has been asked this many times. There is no excuse or need to obfuscate on this. It doesn't detract from the Palestinian issue to admit the size and extent of the holocaust. By making the Holocaust a perennial sticking point between West and East, the Palestinian issue is diminished. It takes Asad off message and undermines his credibility.
Journalist: You don’t believe that though, do you?
President Assad: It’s not a matter of how many were killed, half a million, six million or one person. Killing is killing. For example, eight million Soviets were killed, so why don’t we talk about them? The problem is not the number of those killed but rather how they use the Holocaust. What do the Palestinians have to do with the Holocaust to pay the price?
Journalist: Even people that I know in Iran say they don’t believe what the President is saying. There are people who believe it…
President Assad: In my country you’d see two opinions as well.
Journalist: I want to make sure I understand what you believe. You believe there was a Holocaust where the anti-Semite Nazis killed millions…
President Assad: We, Arabs, are Semitic too. Definitely there were massacres that happened against the Jews during the Second World War, but I’m talking about the concept and how they use it. But I don’t have any clue how many were killed or how they were killed, by gas, by shooting... we don’t know. Journalist: Part of the Nazi policy was to exterminate the Jews. This is not just a massacre.
US commentary about the interview will turn into a debate over the holocaust and not the issues Asad hoped to address, such as terrorism, US policy in the region, and how to improve relations between Syria and the US.
posted by Joshua Landis @ 3/29/2006 10:32:00 AM
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47 Comments:
Almost immediately following the interview, the journalist (Charlie Rose) experienced shortness of breath while still in Syria. He was admitted to a hospital in Paris where he will undergo open-heart surgery today.
Not sure if it was it the strain from the interview or the air/food in Damascus.
I did watch the interview, and must say that I was not impressed by Bashar’s delivery. Though his English seems to have survived the full hour interview, I did not think that he came across looking too “presidential”.
I believe the analysis tackles the issue superficially in a way. I agree with you that the Holocaust is a trap by the interviewer and that Asad should not have fallen in it- maybe be staying elusive till the end-but you have to take into account the criticality of his word on this issue. It’s true that if he says (6 million), the debate about the interview will not focus on this aspect, but this will give way to the Israeli version of history to get an important supporter. The numbers of Jews killed remains an issue for debate even within Europe and Arabs countries are quite sceptical about the exaggerations as you know. This might be not the position of most Americans, but so is Syria's support to Hizballeh which most if not all people see as a terrorist party. He can not just give a different view than his in fear of debate after the interview; can he?!
In short, I believe the interview was not bad in general, aside from the body language issue you mentioned that I didn't see and at which president Asad does not have a bright record. One last good thing will be the emphasis that Arabs are Semitics; this view will be erased by Israeli historians in the next 50 years probably since they've already started working on it.
HAHAHAHA, yes Josh, call his PR office in your capacity as PR manager, after all it was your advice for this stupid thug to come on TV to wow the American audience!
Tsk tsk tsk... You're so pathetic now you're simply funny!
Why is it so difficult to say "the Holocaust happened" and change the subject? So he doesn't anger Ahmadinejad, while coming across as either a waffler or an ignoramus?
What could Mahmoud do? Dump his only friend on the planet?
Other than that, he came across a bit better than I expected, but still had "lightweight" written on his forehead. IMO, his analyses of the region/Iraq/reform etc were sophomoric, at best.
Funny how much importance we attach to "looking serious". Bashar does not have his father's eyes. He will never intimidate the journalist interviewing him.
He stopped laughing at his own jokes, as many critics did not think it was presidential... but he will not act like his father.
I agree with josh, Bahsar did very well in the whole interview. The Holocaust tone started as an attempt to explain how the Iranian president is not such a bad guy, that the questions he raised are shared by many people in our region. The important lesson here is that Syria's fundamentalist friends in the region (Iran, Hizbollah, Hamas...) will limit its degree of maneuverability, in public relations for example (as in this case of trying to defent the Iranian president).
After the damage from his remarks about the Jews whenPope JPII visited Damascus, one hopes the president canput an extra effort to show more sensitivity to Jewish concerns. For example he could have told Charlie Rose aout how he personally invited and met with the leaders of Syrian Jews who visited from NJ few years ago. they were very happy with Bashar and his real tolerant views on jews.
Yes, the impression that remains is that Syria is not friendly to Jews.
Having watched the interview, I did not come away feeling that the Holocaust issue was the central issue. What stood out more was Bashar’s notion of “I told you so” when it came to Iraq. Linked to this was his repeated references to the fact that the US and its administration “do not understand” the region and its people.
What I found to be most interesting (may be I ought to use another word here), however, was when Bashar talked about reforms towards the end when he declared:
“I have my own reform which is different from your reform, and if you are democratic you should accept my reform”.
Mr. President:
Please help us understand what are “your” reforms. You seem to acknowledge that
“Syria is about 18 million people and 60 percent of them are under 25 years old. 300,00 babies are born every year and 200,000 need jobs every year. The most dangerous challenge for our country is to offer jobs for those young people”.
Please tell us what steps have you taken or will take to address this enormous challenge.
While you and your team come up with the plan, please remember that time is not on your country’s side. Since you took over Mr. President, over 1.2 million of your people have joined the ranks of the unemployed (using your own numbers).
With all due respect Dr. Landis, the Syrian people do not care about how the American people will react when they listen to their leader describe the Holocaust. What they are more interested in is putting bread on their tables and making sure that their government has a plan that would address the many needs of their 300,000 newly born.
Why does the holocaust remain a sticking point? It happened, now lets move on...reparations/apologies are being/have been paid./made. No justice can ever be done to those who suffered. But bringing it up constantly doesnt serve any purpose.
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Josh
infact his answer was excellent on the holocaust, the facts are there was exageration, the american position is wrong and the number of jews before and after the war in germany was the same,six million is wrong,
my problems with Bashar, that he doesnot understand what is democrasy and freedom, his security apparatus imprisoning many good syrian citizen,and he and his family and friends stole billions of dollars from the syrian people.
he thinks he knows what is good for syria, when the people through voluntary cooperation should be the one to decide what is good for syria,instead he ordered by command,presidential decree, this is wrong.he earned his place by birth, not by overcoming difficulties, Hariri murder was major mistake,he will never get away with it.
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I am so glad to see that Ehsani and other relevant posters are back to this blog !
I totally agree with Ehsani point of view, ordinary Syrian citizens needs to feel the wind of changes.
Promised by Dr Bashar since he has been in the office for over five years, this notion
“I have my own reform which is different from your reform" does not buy bread and food, does not create jobs and family security, does not bring the well being, feeling of importance the Syrian society, does not bring investments to the Syrian economy.
The Syrian peoples must see the benefits, improvements in the stander of living now; otherwise, he should be voted out of the office!!!
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SRP,
I need to Cry on Faris Elkhory, Shukri al-Quwatli shoulders and tell them that someone like Qadoura was leading the Syrian parliament. I wish I can Cry on Faris Elkhory and tell him what a place the parliament became!!.
I would love to cry on tha late Foreign Minister Jamil Mardam Bey and tell inform him on the Arab League Conference show !!
I would love to cry on Khalid al-Azm shoulder and tell him what kind of a Prim mister syria has now..
I would love to cry on President Hashim al-Atassi and his Prime Minister Sabri al-Asali and Colonel Adnan al-Malki ..and tell them about the state syria in..
Bashar said the problem with the Holocaust is the way it has been used by Israel ("but I’m talking about the concept and how they use it").
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Metaz Aldendeshe
A.ka Micheal Rossini
Please keep in mind, The discussion is not about you and me, It's about Syria man.
FYI.... I am an Atassi and proud of it. leave the personal issues out of this discussion and try to build a credibility for your self if possible
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I don't care about you or your bunch of SRP losers... To me you are con artist with no credibility. Get lost
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I can' believe it I made the same mistake again, I gave some attention to this SRP dude. Please except my apology Syrian comments readers
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“First, our priority now is security...Second comes the economy and then other fields”
This is the critical quote from the entire interview.
Those who are calling for human rights will have to wait for sometime as their demands presumably fall under the last third priority of “other fields”.
Those who are calling for immediate and dramatic steps on the economic front (this includes myself) are slightly luckier as they are ahead of their human right advocate friends on the priority list.
Top priority of course is security (ie: stay in power) and the able and trusted Mr. Shawkat is in command of this agenda. All else takes a back seat.
You have to give the Bashar credit for being very transparent and clear. For some reason, a significant number of people seem to think that he ought to reshuffle his priorities so that “other fields” or the economy are ahead of security for example. Perhaps, Bashar should have made his views easier to understand by stating that
His first priority is security
His second priority is security
His third priority is also security
Presumably then people will start to finally understand him and to start to give him a break.
I saw the interview and I thought Bashar al Asad looked at ease and candid, sometimes even like a kid. His dscussion about the holocauste was badly served by his english: I understood what he meant, but I doubt opponent will read the same: What he meant is that the holocauste had nothing to do with the arabs (or the persians). It was the Europeans who massacred their own jews and only they can claim how many they massacred. We have no archives on this matter, they do.
In addition, the zionists ("they:) have used the massacre to justify grabbing the palestinian lands with the complacency of the guilt stricken europeans .
Otherwise I think he did rather well, yet I wonder if his claim that no syrian was involved in the Hariri murder and that Syria never murdered anyone will stand after the Grammertz report will be published.
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Actually I do not understand why Middle East leaders are grilled with the Holocaust in the interviews. What has Holocaust to do with them? Basically it is the same if Russian President would be asked: How many Native Americans were killed in USA after their independence? What if a western Leader would be grilled how many million Arabs had been killed during the times of Western Colonial time and doesn’t it justify “this and that”?
This argument of six million is rather naïve to be used in the present political discussion. Is this 6 million a real historical fact or an approximation made just after WW2? Some sources speak about 3 million. 1 or 6 million, more important was the totally unbelievable way how this genocide was performed. But the responsibility belongs to Germans not to Arabs. So using Holocaust as an excuse for to days actions is rather unbelievable and it must seen as pure propaganda. Native Americans can’t go around killing people by saying remember the Holocaust of or Ancestors. Neither Arabs could not justify their violent actions by only calling up of those millions of their country men who where killed during the colonial time.
For Arabs the Holocaust caused that the Jews came and were able to create Israel. Nothing else. The hate against Israel is caused by Israel’s behaviour after its independence, not by a racist historical genocide mentality.
Since when people refer to Assad as "The President " ? what's next, the 'Rais'?
Th e question was an entrapment to president Asad ,If he agrees with the holocost and the nomber that he can not verify and many people in the west doubt but can not chalenge then he will be in contrast to the beleif of most syrians and Arabs that the number is exagrated to get sympathy these days and to terrorise the jews of Europ of the twentieth century into moving to Palestine,after all Asad is the president of Syria and if he agreed to the number i doubt that the west will find anyting good to say about Syria so he stayed vague to avoid anoying his layal freind the Iranian without any hope of freindship from the west and the US.
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Wow, I've been away from SC for a long time, just lurking, since it's been a slow news year so far...
Anyway, regarding the interview: I was really surprised that Bashar actually did better than expected, and his lisp wasn't as noticable as usual. He fumbled a few words here and there, but he was mentally present in general. As for the Holocaust question, I thought it was a very insulting question by Charlie Rose, who sounded like he's been briefed by a bunch of rabbis before the interview. Everyone who's not brainwashed knows very well that the Holocaust is being used for blackmail and for the Jews to appear like poor victims, nevermind that Arabs didn't have anything to do with it, or that we are on the receiving end of the Jewish brutality, yet we're asked to be sympathetic to what the West did to them... doesn't make any sense.
Either way, The most amusing part of the interview for me was when Rose asked Bashar if he's going to be in power by 2008, and Bashar said that he would like to 'serve' his country for the rest of his life. He said that in Syria 'traditionally' power was exchanged thru coup d'etats (yeah, ok). So as long as no one is trying to take him down, it means 'his' people have chosen him and want him to stay in power... talk about delusional.
“… you fight extremism through moderation, but you cannot separate moderation in Islam from moderation in politics or moderation in society. The same applies to extremism. So
“…if you have a very sore political issue, you will have a very sore society. You will have extremism in society and extremism in religion. So what you say is correct, but you need a climate to help.” How? “Through just political stands regarding the different issues in hot spots around the world. Second, by spreading culture and culture means dialogue. Third, by developing economically. Through economy you can reach farther than through any other means. The last resort, if necessary, is the intelligence cooperation but not war.”
I like this rational…. but why doesn’t its promoter use it internally? We need just political stands on our internal issues, we need dialogue and we need to put bread on the table. The last resort to restoring peace in a society would be “force/security measures”. Why is he doing things internally exactly in reverse order?
DamasceneBlood:
You said:
"Either way, The most amusing part of the interview for me was when Rose asked Bashar if he's going to be in power by 2008, and Bashar said that he would like to 'serve' his country for the rest of his life. He said that in Syria 'traditionally' power was exchanged thru coup d'etats (yeah, ok)..."
I listened to the video and looked at the transcript and can't find what you claim he said that Syria 'traditionally' exchanged thru coupd d'etats. Perhaps I missed it.
The intervew reached the US and nobody is talking about the Houlocost segment ,Are we making a big deal out of nothing on this site or the US is trying to cool the attacks on Syria?.
Actualy everybody is talking about Asad and Syria desire to have good relation with the US.
Norman, you are right on this one.
A google news search on "Assad Rose" yields:
71 articles bunched under
"Syria's Assad Calls for Better US Ties"
8 Articles under:
"Assad: Holocaust numbers don't matter"
Of course the Holocaust articles are such a distortion of what he said. I personally think he should have had the answer ready with expressing deep sympathy for the holocaust survivors, even recounting a personla anecdote such as "I met this couple who survived when they came to visit me last year, bla bla bla." then jump to expressing how arabs muslim, christian and jew lived side by side for centuries. Then he can say that while the holocaust is such a tragic and deplorable event it does not involve the Palestinians.
Josh ,can you do somthing about idiotic notes and ban their writers from this site like the Lebanese pride.
Accepting that the Holocaust happened, accepting that it was a huge crime, will help the Arab cause. Ahmedinejad's comments were excellent until he undermined himself by calling the holocaust a myth. The fact is that most Jews didn't want to go to Palestine until the racist Nazis started slaughtering them. We have Hitler to thank for establishing the state of Israel, and the US to thank for perpetuating it, - not out of love for Jews but to extend their (gentile) imperialist ambitions. Bashaar should clearly accept the reality of the holocaust, and thus undercut the absurd zionist argument that Arabs oppose zionism because they are anti-semitic. He should then point out more strongly that two wrongs do not make a right, that it wasn't the Arabs who massacred Jews, that in any case Jewish immigration into the Middle East isn't a problem, but Jews setting up a Jewish state and expelling Muslims and Christians is.
Ugarit,
I'm pretty sure I heard that, I can't find any full transcripts online, but I have the show recorded on my DVR, I'll go back and make sure if he said that or not (although I'm pretty positive he did).
Josh, sorry to say, you are as pathetic as Assad's chickenshitting the holocaust!
That's all it deserves in your book in terms of comments?, "The low point of the interview was Asad's response to Rose's questions about the Holocaust." That's all it is to you?, a "low point"?
Dude, Assad is the guy who shot his mouth standing next to John Paul II during the latter's visit to Dimashq, saying something to the effect that "those same 'djooos' who killed your Jesus..."
Dude, your guy is a moron, and an offensive vulgar one at that! You can be a moron and hide it well.
You know what Josh? I used to have some respect for your "scholarship", but I guess I misread you! You're different from every other American academic who make careers out of faulty interpretations of the Middle East, dig in their heels, and stick to their stories.
I meant to say "you're NO different from every other American academic..." etc.....
you get the point. You're quite crafty that way!
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