Noose Tightening Around Assad?

[Adam's Apple]

The Noose Tightens
By Victor Davis Hanson
March 24, 2005

His new Middle East neighborhood cannot make Syria's dictator Bashar Assad very happy. Turkey is democratic to his north. A million Arabs vote in Israel to the south. Palestinians are near civil war to establish democratic rule — their own terrorists more a threat to the newly elected Abu Abbas than are Israeli tanks.

Iraq to the east is settling down under its new autonomy, forging through blood and fire the Arab world's first true democracy. Lebanon is now afire with anti-Syrian sentiment, equating its occupation with the last obstacle to a democratic renaissance.

Beyond Syria's borders, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's announcement that he may be forced to act as if he will hold real elections is not welcome to Assad. Nor is the strange behavior of once-kindred Col. Moammar Gadhafi and all his unexpected talk of giving up forbidden weapons and letting Westerners back into Libya.

When Wahhabist Saudi Arabia promises municipal elections, or Afghan women line up at the polls for hours, then the world has been turned upside down. Syria's worst nightmare is not an American invasion, but an Arab League that is dominated by nascent democracies.

Thugocracies and kleptocracies, however, die hard. So will that of Bashar Assad. His henchmen probably blew up former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, in fears that the Westernized entrepreneur dreamed of an open Arab Singapore or Monaco on the border. Now they are planning to unleash enough 1970s-style violence to terrify the Lebanese into preferring Syrian order to their own messy freedom. Hand-in-glove with fellow pariah Iran, Syria hopes to keep sending enough cash and expatriates back into Iraq to stop the democracy contagion before it infects any more.

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0305/hanson/0322305.php3

 

[no1tovote4]

I love it when a plan comes together...

 

[waltky]

Syria should be so lucky...

Syrian regime denies Bashar al-Assad has suffered a stroke after years of 'psychological pressure'
Saturday 28 January 2017 - Syrian dictator in hospital in Damascus, according to unconfirmed reports

The Syrian government has denied rumours President Bashar al-Assad has suffered a stroke. In a statement on Facebook, the government said Assad was in “excellent health and carrying out his functions quite naturally”. It said “the Syrian people had become immune to such lies” which and said the rumours would only provoke “derision”. The denial follows reports by a Lebanese newspaper, al-Mustaqbal, which quoted “reliable sources” saying Assad had suffered from a cerebral infarction and was currently being treated in hospital.

Another Lebanese newspaper, al-Diyar, which supports the Syrian regime, also reported on Friday that the dictator had suffered from a stroke but had since retracted the story, the Saudi-owned news channel al-Arabiya reported. Earlier this week, Saudi-owned newspaper Asharq al-Awsat claimed the president’s mental health was suffering after almost six years of civil war. Citing unnamed sources it said Russian officials believed Assad was “exhausted by five years of war and tension” and had developed a nervous tick in his left eye as a result of “psychological pressure”.

The rumours come at a time when the tide of the war is turning in Assad’s favour. After months of heavy bombardment Syrian and Russian forces broke the siege of Aleppo at the end of last year. Meanwhile over in Washington, Donald Trump’s signalling that he intends to cooperate with Russia more closely on Syria has led to fears that US will lessen its opposition to Moscow’s actions in the regime. During an interview with The Sunday Times last year Assad said he had no trouble sleeping at night when he was asked if the deaths of children killed in Aleppo and elsewhere weighed on his mind.

Syrian regime denies Bashar al-Assad has suffered a stroke