EDITORIAL : THE NEW YORK TIMES, USA

 

President Assad’s Crackdown 

 

When Bashar al-Assad succeeded his father, Hafez, as Syria’s president in 2000, the United States and many others hoped that Syria might finally stop persecuting its people and become a more responsible regional power.

That didn’t happen. Now Mr. Assad appears determined to join his father in the ranks of history’s blood-stained dictators, sending his troops and thugs to murder anyone who has the courage to demand political freedom.
More than 400 people have died since demonstrations began two months ago. On Monday, the Syrian Army stormed the city of Dara’a, the center of the popular opposition. Phone, water and electricity lines have been cut and journalists barred from reporting firsthand what is really happening there.
Mr. Assad finally outlined a reform agenda last week, abolishing emergency laws that for nearly 50 years gave the government a free hand to arrest people without cause. But his bloody crackdown belied the concession, and he is fast losing all legitimacy.
President Obama came into office determined to engage Syria and nudge it away from Iran and toward political reform. Even after the violence began, Mr. Obama and his aides kept quietly nudging in hopes that Mr. Assad would make the right choice.
In retrospect, that looks naïve. Still, we have sympathy for Mr. Obama’s attempts. Years of threats from the George W. Bush administration only pushed Syria further into the arms of Iran — and did nothing to halt the repression or Syria’s support for Hezbollah.
The president’s patience has apparently run out. Last Friday — the bloodiest day of the uprising — he issued a statement condemning the violence and accusing Mr. Assad of seeking Iranian assistance in brutalizing his people. That is a start, but it is not nearly enough.
Let’s be clear: Another war would be a disaster. Syria has one of the more capable armies in the region. And while there is no love for Mr. Assad, he is no Qaddafi, and the backlash in the Arab world would be enormous.
What the United States and its allies can do (British, French and Italian leaders have also been critical) is rally international condemnation and tough sanctions. They can start with their own unilateral punishments — asset freezes and travel bans for Mr. Assad and his top supporters and a complete arms embargo.
Washington and its allies need to press the Arab League and the United Nations Security Council to take strong stands. Muammar el-Qaddafi had no friends, so the league had little trouble supporting action against Libya. Syria is far more powerful, and Mr. Assad’s autocracy uncomfortably familiar to many Arab leaders.
So far, all the Arab League has been willing to do is issue a statement declaring that pro-democracy protesters “deserve support, not bullets” — conspicuously without mentioning Syria. If the Arab League and its leaders want to be taken seriously, including in their own countries, they are going to have to do better.
The Security Council hasn’t even been able to muster a press statement. Russia and China, as ever, are determined to protect autocrats. That cannot be the last word.
The International Criminal Court should investigate the government’s abuses. And we welcome the Obama administration’s push to have the United Nations Human Rights Council spotlight Syria’s abuses in a session on Friday. Ultimately, Syrians will determine their country’s fate. Mr. Assad commands a powerful security establishment, but he cannot stifle the longing for freedom forever.

 

Saving the Doha Round

 

After a decade of frustratingly little progress, it is easy to conclude that the negotiations to reduce global trade barriers have failed. But letting the so-called Doha round of world trade talks collapse could spur a protectionist backlash and deal a huge blow to international cooperation on even bigger challenges, including global warming and financial reform.

When ambassadors from around the world meet in Geneva on Friday, they will likely have to settle for lesser gains, such as streamlining customs procedures and other rules that would at least reduce the costs of trade.

The Doha negotiations, opened shortly after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, were sold as a way to boost economic development in the poorest countries by slashing barriers on their exports to richer markets.

While a tentative agreement was reached to grant preferential access to most of the exports of the least developed countries, it has been held hostage by a lack of agreement in broader negotiations between rich countries and big developing countries.

The developing countries argued that they had already made too many concessions in a previous trade round. The rich nations then insisted that they would give nothing without getting something in return.

These positions have only hardened as the big developing countries have become some of the world’s biggest traders. The latest snag is over tariffs on industrial goods like chemicals and machinery. There’s little chance of a breakthrough.

It is time for all of the players to rethink their responsibilities. As their power grows, big developing countries, in particular, must be willing to make concessions for the sake of preserving a stable global trading system.

As for these negotiations, it is still possible for all players to keep their promise of duty- and quota-free access to most exports from the poorest countries. Negotiators could also reform the dispute settlement mechanism and ease customs procedures and handling fees.

This may sound small next to Doha’s original ambitions, but it would be a lot better than a complete breakdown, which would punish the poorest nations while undermining the credibility of the World Trade Organization and poisoning the well for other international agreements.

Going forward, the big question for world leaders is not how to agree on some tariff cuts. It is how to create a common agenda to steer the world economy, supported by rich countries and the developing nations.

 

A Stronger and Clearer Clean Water Act

 

The Obama administration’s new guidelines for the Clean Water Act are an important first step in restoring vital legal safeguards to wetlands and streams threatened by development and pollution.

The guidelines are opposed by the usual suspects — real estate interests, homebuilders, farmers, the oil companies. They were welcomed, rightly so, by conservationists and others who have watched in despair as enforcement actions dropped and water pollution levels went up.

For nearly three decades, the 1972 act was broadly interpreted by the courts and federal regulators as shielding virtually all the waters of the United States from pollution and unregulated development — seasonal streams and small, remote wetlands, as well as lakes and large navigable waters. The basic idea was that small waters have some hydrological connection to larger watersheds and should be protected against pollution that would inevitably find its way downstream.

Then came two Supreme Court decisions that left uncertain which waterways were protected by the law. A 2001 decision suggested that the law applied only to large navigable waterways, while a 2006 ruling suggested that only waters with a “significant nexus” to navigable waterways could be protected. Those decisions — plus subsequent guidance from the George W. Bush administration — confused regulators and exposed millions of acres of wetlands and thousands of miles of streams to development.

The new guidelines now restore protections to small streams and wetlands that have a “physical, chemical or biological connection” to larger bodies of water downstream. That is good news with the clear caveat that they are administrative guidance, with no force in law, and subject to fairly easy reversal by another administration.

Legislation reaffirming the original scope of the law would be the best solution. But since that is not in the cards in this Congress, we urge the Environmental Protection Agency to turn the guidance into a formal rule that would, at least, be harder to undo.

 

 

 

In the Wake of Wednesday’s Tornadoes

 

The violent storms that struck the South on Wednesday may break one of nature’s grimmer records. On April 3, 1974, 148 tornadoes touched down on a single day and left behind a trail of wreckage nearly 2,500 miles long. As many as 135 tornadoes were reported on Wednesday, wrecking homes, towns and lives.
As of this writing, nearly 300 people have been killed by the storms, 195 of them in Alabama. According to some estimates, the power outages could affect as many people as Hurricane Katrina did.
The wonder is that the death toll was not higher — thanks, largely, to the accuracy of warnings from the National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center and the wisdom of officials who shut down businesses, schools and government offices for much of the day.
The number and intensity of these storms, which have marched from East Texas to Virginia in the past few days, has surprised even veteran forecasters, who watched as fierce, tight clusters of flame-colored cells gathered on their radar screens. The actual horror Alabamans witnessed was different from the typical sinuous, conical twisters. These tornadoes that looked more like bulky thunderheads, spiraling across the earth’s surface in a cloud of debris, including the milewide one that crushed much of Tuscaloosa.
We cannot imagine the force those storms carried or the grief and destruction they left behind. We hope, as everyone must, that there will be clear weather following, giving Southerners a chance to mourn the lives that were lost and start the rebuilding.