Euphoria Turns to Panic!

For all the blows that the Mehlis investigation has supposedly received and for all those commentators so willing to declare that the French and Americans have backed off for now, leaving the door open for a potential deal with the regime, the popular mood in Syria has grown grim once again.

The stories propagated by the “recantant witness” seem like distant memories now. Their chief protagonist seems to have already sunk back into oblivion. The euphoria he inspired seems to have dissipated all too quickly, somehow. But then, it was never really a genuine expression of anything other than despair. Continue reading “Euphoria Turns to Panic!” →

Peachy Heresies!

Is the Syrian regime finally off the hook? Does the international community, headed by France and the US, seem to be backing down at this stage allowing Bashar & Co. to continue to rule Syria for a little while longer for fear of creating another failed state in the region at such inopportune times? If this is so, does this mean that Bashar’s strategy of wagging the Islamists worked, especially with the indirect aid of the Amman terrorist attacks? Moreover, is Syria planning to crackdown against PKK outposts in the northeastern parts of the country to curry favor with Turkey?

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All About Viable Friends & Nonviable Regimes!

Back in Syria, my friend Joshua Landis and I inadvertently managed to develop a nice double act of sorts. He would defend the continued viability of the Syrian regime and the necessity for maintaining dialogue with it, and I would go on castigating the regime and attempting to convince people of its nonviability and the futility of all efforts at dialogue with it.

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An Unfortunate Trait!

The way leftist intellectual continue to think in Syria baffles me. External support for them is acceptable if it came from Europe, but not if it came from the US. Why? Is Europe any less supportive of Israel? Or are European countries any less willing to push us around when their interests demand that they do so? If so, how can we interpret France’s attitude vis-à-vis the Syrian regime at this stage? How do we interpret their intervention in the Ivory Coast, for that matter, which was, by the way, quite unilateral?

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