Senator Joe Lieberman said he is all for enforcing a no-fly zone in Syria should Bashar al-Assad continue to slaughter innocent civilians, in sharp contrast to the White House position voiced by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton yesterday, who said U.S. military intervention in Syria was “off the table”.
Lieberman, an independent from Connecticut, warned Assad that he risks facing the same fate as Col. Muammar Gaddafi in Libya and advised the Syrian dictator to negotiate with “freedom fighters” in his country. Imposing a no-fly zone would be “consistent with our American values.” Lieberman also told "Fox News Sunday":
“If Assad does what Gaddafi was doing, which is to threaten to go house to house and kill anybody who’s not on his side, there’s a precedent now that the world community has set in Libya, and it’s the right one. We’re not going to stand by and allow this Assad to slaughter his people like his father did years ago.”
This comes in the wake of the Syrian regime’s violent crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators, which has resulted in over 60 deaths in the past week alone.
Clinton, on the other hand, referred to Assad as a reformer and described the clashes in Syria as part of a "police action" as opposed to a military campaign like the one Gaddafi launched against his own people in Libya. Clinton said:
"Each of these situations is unique," she said on CBS' "Face the Nation." "Certainly we deplore the violence in Syria."
Arizona Republican Senator John McCain, who appeared on the same FOX program, wouldn’t go as far as Lieberman in comparing the uprising in Syria with the pro-democracy movements in Libya, Tunisia and Egypt, and said each country is different:
“Let’s give moral support to these (protesters) in Syria,” McCain said, “but let’s not take our eye off Egypt. Egypt is the key.”
On CNN’s “State of the Union,” Senator Carl Levin, Michigan Democrat, also balked on backing another U.S.-led military intervention, saying Syria is different from the situation in Libya because the intervention against Gaddafi was supported by the international community, including the Arab League.
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