I’m happy for the
people of Egypt. They have another shot at democracy and maybe they can even
pull it off themselves, without our help. Though $8 billion of Saudi money won’t
hurt.
Syria, on the other
hand, is in a mess that’s just getting worse. The pressure the regime has been
able to put on the revolution with the help or Russian and Iranian arms and
ordnance has begun to split it along the lines of its internal contradictions –
contradictions I’ve been thinking about but didn’t blog about because, well,
the situation has become too sad to contemplate.
What happened?
The splits between the Islamist and secular parties in the Egyptian revolution
do not appear to have hardened so much that they have no recourse other than
physical confrontation. At least that’s true this week.
In Syria, the
same set of contradictions is not between parties, but between seasoned combat
units that do not really happen to effectively be under the same chain of
command. On the one side, I imagine, the patriotic, liberal youth of Syria are
pretty much all mobilized already, and, even though their general says there
are sufficient of them to the task at hand, their numbers can only go down. The
other side continues to recruit from jihadist fundamentalism across the whole
Islamic world.
So not only is
the Islamic side of the revolution in Syria more radical than the Brotherhood
in Egypt, it is already fully armed and ready to fight whomever it is God’s
will they should fight. Moreover they have an independent territorial basis and
an ad hoc state apparatus in hand. To the extent they are non-Syrian jihadists,
this resembles conquered territory. So if Bashar were to resign today, only force majeure could keep these splits
from bursting wide open and could give the Syrian people something resembling a
nation to dwell in.
In other words,
the time for the self-determination of the Syrian revolution is over. That way
lies oblivion. The alternative would be an army of occupation under the auspices
of the U.N. maybe or even NATO. Something like this was, I believe, in planning
under the previous Secretary of State. What’s still missing is some really
compelling inducement for Bashar to step down. Sad that that’s not in the
offing; the reverse is the case. But it’s just as hard to see what would induce
the Russians to change their policy. Certainly the sufferings of the Syrian people
have made no impression.
...Bashar’s dream?
Oh, that he prevails against a “revolution” that really just consists of
terrorists and the hirelings of foreigners.
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