June 30, 2012
Minaret of the Bride, Damascus
Inside Syria itself, Western journalists get their info only from jihadis trying to overthrow the Assad regime. There are reports that “rebels” fire upon the army with the sole purpose of inciting riot and mayhem. British reporter Alex Thompson says he was entrapped into a fire zone by jihadis hoping the army would kill him, thereby gaining them more sympathy from the West. A friend of mine who has just come out of Syria told me that he’s pretty sure the murder of children and certain other massacres bear the mark of militant Islam.
Although I rejoiced at the Gaddafi gang’s downfall, take a look at Libya eight months after his demise. It’s a far, far worse place than it ever was under the mad dog Gaddafi. (The only thing good to emerge was that we won”t have his vile children visiting European fleshpots this summer and coming winter.)
The Syrian conflict has nothing to do with freedom and everything to do with the new Cold War between the West and Russia. The latter supports Syria’s secular regime, just as Uncle Sam and his stooges in Europe support the Gulf’s kleptocracies and the illegal occupation of Palestinian lands.
If anyone had any brains inside the Beltway”and if there were any parties not locked down by the Israeli lobby”they would let Russia negotiate the Assads” future, making sure that Saudi-financed jihadis were expelled from that ancient land. Yes, the Assad father-and-son regime has been in power since 1970 and has been quite brutal by Western standards”but not by Middle Eastern ones. But looking at how clumsy and self-defeating American foreign policy is, how in the hell did the good uncle ever win against the big, bad Russian bear? I”ll tell you how. The bear fell into a hole”one it had dug itself”and the uncle took the credit.
