"These sanctions were passed with the best of intentions, but they backfired. Ordinary people couldn't get around them, so their businesses closed down. But warlords and cronies politically connected to President Bashar al-Assad got a lucrative monopoly on just about everything."
"Even when al-Assad was still in power, there was a strong case for letting the act expire on Dec. 20 as scheduled. That case got even stronger in recent days, when a coalition of Islamist rebels forced al-Assad to flee."
"It would be ridiculous to keep sanctions meant to punish al-Assad after al-Assad has fled. Unfortunately, it's not unusual for U.S. sanctions to live on as zombie sanctions long after the conditions they were meant to address have changed."
Collection
[
|
...
]