“…it is highly unlikely that the Syrian regime will voluntarily effect any major changes in its general structure or its modus operandi. Half-hearted pressures on it to do so will probably not be enough. Still, a full-scale invasion with the goal of effecting a regime change, even with a good casus belli in hand, will most likely prove too problematic at this stage. Syria has a relatively new president who has been received with all due honors by many world leaders, including Spanish Prime Minister José Maria Aznar, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, German Prime Minister Gerhardt Schroeder, and French President Jacques Chirac. Syria’s relations with the world community are much more intricate and ambivalent than those of the Taliban or the Saddam regime, as we have noted earlier. The case against Syria will never be as clear-cut as that against Afghanistan or Iraq. A full-scale invasion of Syria would seem to require a U.S. administration that is even more oblivious to the rest of the world than the current Bush administration seems to be. Continue reading “The Myriad Faces of Heresy!”
Tag: United States
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?
The Lion’s Coalition!
So the Syrian President is busy these days making all sorts of overture to the Muslim Brotherhood, a development that is currently being touted by some as a sign of openness on part of the ruling clique.
The President’s new strategy, it seems, aims at playing at the anti-American tendencies of both the Islamists and the nationalists in an attempt to build a broad coalition that can enable its regime to survive whatever sanctions and isolation that will be inevitably imposed on his regime, the recent decision to cooperate with the UN probe notwithstanding. Continue reading “The Lion’s Coalition!”
The Ammar Abdulhamid Archive 