{"id":21786,"date":"2012-08-25T12:54:44","date_gmt":"2012-08-25T08:54:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/?p=21786"},"modified":"2013-01-02T11:57:50","modified_gmt":"2013-01-02T07:57:50","slug":"syria-we-all-have-2020-vision-in-hindsight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/middle-east-business\/middle-east-media-analysis\/syria-we-all-have-2020-vision-in-hindsight\/","title":{"rendered":"Syria: We All Have 20:20 Vision in Hindsight"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

An interesting argument is brewing over on The Spectator blog, between Nick Cohen and the always readable Matthew Teller.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It started off as a rant against travel guidebooks, Lonely Planet in particular. But it has ended up in a fight over who knew what, and when, about Assad.<\/p>\n

Cohen\u2019s opening salvo<\/a> pulls out a few lines from the (2004?) Lonely Planet guide to Syria, as if to mock with his crystal clear hindsight:<\/p>\n

Assad\u2019s pre-revolutionary Syria, the guide informs readers, was a land with cautious hope for the future. \u2018Reforms by the young president of Syria, Bashar al-Assad, may not have been as wide-ranging as many might have hoped, but there is certainly a feeling of optimism in the capital. Culture and tourism are high on the agenda and Damascus has responded with a flurry of art gallery and hotel openings (including the long-awaited Four Seasons).\u2019<\/p>\n

The thing is, the book is absolutely right. There\u00a0was<\/em> cautious hope in Damascus, the regime was pushing culture and tourism hard (the Arab Capital of Culture<\/a> was a massive deal for the regime), and expat Syrians<\/a> were returning to the country.<\/p>\n

Elsewhere in the book, the Hama massacre, political prisoners, and the death of the Damascus Spring are all detailed. Cohen\u2019s selective reading fails to pick up on this.<\/p>\n

Matthew Teller, never a fan of Assad, picks up the argument<\/a>:<\/p>\n

“Perhaps Cohen doesn\u2019t know much about the Middle East, but there really were, on all sides, high hopes for Syria in the few years after Bashar al-Assad\u2019s rise to power: indeed, the Western media dubbed the period the \u201cDamascus Spring\u201d. I can personally vouch for the accuracy of Lonely Planet\u2019s identification of \u201ca feeling of optimism in the capital\u201d around that time. It\u2019s easy to imply, as Cohen does, that writing about gallery openings and new hotels is a pernicious insult when placed beside the murderous violence we are now witnessing, but then hindsight has always been a seductive tool. At the time, in 2006, Syria-watchers were well aware that the opening of the Four Seasons in Damascus signalled the possibility of improving economic liberalisation. By 2009 even The Economist \u2013 notorious, of course, for its lefty whitewashing \u2013\u00a0was noting<\/a>\u00a0that \u201creforms have tapped suppressed entrepreneurial vigour [in Syria]\u201d. Then the wheels came off, with unspeakably awful consequences. Journalists were wrong about Syria. Academics were wrong. Diplomats were wrong. Syrians themselves were wrong. But Cohen thinks the author of the Lonely Planet should have got it right.”<\/p>\n

Cohen can\u2019t let it go<\/a>. His argument is hollow, and he doesn\u2019t seem to understand that a paragraph he copies and pastes from the Lonely Planet website about Syria coming in from the cold is probably years old.<\/p>\n

The fact is this \u2013 the revolution took us all by surprise, even lifelong anti-Assad activists<\/a>. Cohen, though, saw it all coming. Shame he didn\u2019t tell us back then.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re struggling to remember what the world thought of Syria pre-March 2011, have a look at this compilation<\/a> of Syria stories by Jillian York.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SYRIA NEWS WIRE: Eight years ago the prevailing opinion about the future of Syria was optimistic. A British journalist knew better than everyone apparently<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":81,"featured_media":21814,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[154,483,44,89,482,317],"tags":[513,703,10371,100,14670,191,10562,18330],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21786"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/81"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21786"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21786\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}