Right Wing Nut House

Via Instapundit:

The elder Assad’s untimely death put Bashar in command, but not in control, of Syria. His dad’s cronies control most of the bureaucracy, armed forces and security organizations. There is no agreement among all these chiefs about what to do to stay in power. Thus we have the bizarre contrast of Syrian police turning over Saddam’s half-brother and 30 of his henchmen, while Syrian agents facilitate the assassination of a prominent anti-Syrian Lebanese politician, and a suicide bombing inside Israel. All within two weeks. No senior Syrians will admit that no one is completely in control in Syria. It is feared that there may be a coup, as some of the senior generals and security officials push Bashar Assad aside and take over. Bashar is seen by his father’s old timers as too inexperienced. But the problem is that Syria is simply in a very bad situation. Like Iraq, Syria adopted the Baath Party to run the country decades ago. Like Iraq, the socialist dictatorship of the Baath Party led to corruption and economic decline. This has made enemies of Syria’s neighbors, and the Syrian people. The Syrian Baath Party has run out of credit, and credibility. The bill is now due, and no one wants to pay.

Assad’s father Hafez al Assad was a classic “strongman” controlling the army and intelligence service with an iron fist while using an efficient and deadly secret police to stifle dissent and maintain control of the populace. His Soviet allies sold him modern weaponry while backing him diplomatically in his quest to use Lebanon as both a buffer state against Israel and a foward staging area to precipitate attacks on the Jewish homeland.

Hafez Assad was a player in the sometimes deadly game of middle east politics because he could stay one or two steps ahead of his adversaries in Beirut as well as Washington and Tel Aviv. He was sure handed in his dealings with other Arab states, especially his fellow Ba’athists in Iraq. And he was a survivor, realizing after the first Persian Gulf War that, in order to maintain his position, he would have to at least give the appearance of talking to Israel.

His son Bashar succeeded to the Presidency upon Hafez’s death in 2000. Bashar, an ophthalmologist by training, came to politics late. His older brother Basil, groomed by his father to succeed him, died in a car crash in 1994. Bashar, then, was thrust into the role of putative successor. After 6 years in the military, Bashar was “elected” by the Syrian parliment to the presidency.

Bashar has been caught flat footed by the reaction to what apparently was the Syrian assassination of Rafik Hariri, former Lebanese Prime Minister. First the US and EU and now even the Arab League and Russia are calling on Syrian troops to vacate Lebanon.

What makes this so dangerous for Bashar is that Syria is economically dependent on Lebanon. Nearly 10% of Syrians are employed in Lebanon as guest workers. Couple that with the illicit drug trade that brings much needed hard currency (plus influence bought by Bashar in the army) and you have something of an explosive situation for the Syrian President. In order to stay in power, he’s going to need to keep the army happy. But if Syria is forced to leave Lebanon, not only will this be a humiliating setback for the army, but Bashar will lose the Bekaa valley, the growing and distribution center for the hashish and opium Bashar uses to reward his favorites in the army and secret police. And the fate of Syria’s guest workers could precipitate a full-blown economic crisis that would cripple the country’s ability to support the terrorist networks of Hamas and Hezbollah, both headquartered in Damascus.

It remains to be seen whether Bashar has the experience and the ruthlessness to survive once his troops pull out of Lebanon. If the above excerpt on Syrian politics is accurate-if Bashar in fact has only nominal control of the army and the party-the withdrawal of Syrian troops could mean a death warrant.

Dictators don’t usually retire and get million dollar book contracts.

Cross-posted at Blogger News Network

UPDATE

The Saudi’s just joined the chorus for a Syrian pullout from Lebanon. This is bad news for Assad because Sauid Arabia has been one of Syria’s most reliable allies in the past.

Captain Ed is thinking along the same lines that I am above:

Their [the Saudi's] blunt demand to retreat from Syria only piles the pressure on Damascus, and if enough of it builds up, Assad may have to flee for his life as Syrian power brokers rethink their support for his regime.

Assad may not last the weekend if this keeps up.

Looks like Baby Assad has seen the writing on the wall; or does he feel a kick in the pants?

Syria expects to withdraw its troops from Lebanon in a few months, President Bashar al-Assad said in an interview published on Tuesday.

“It (withdrawal) should be very soon and maybe in the next few months. Not after that. I can’t give you a technical answer. The point is the next few months,” he told Time magazine.

Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain. This is NOT the result of anything George Bush has done or advocated. Don’t believe me? Just ask this guy:

But it literally never crossed my mind that Bush’s fans would credit him with for this positive event, as though his pro-democracy speeches exercise some sort of rhetorical enchantment.

This is the kind of thinking, of course, that has convinced God knows how many people that Ronald Reagan personally won the Cold War. It’s the old post hoc ergo propter hoc (after this, therefore because of this) logical fallacy.

Ahem…talk about “logical fallacies”…When a President (Reagan) announces to the world less than 6 months into his first term that the Soviet Union is an “evil empire” and will eventually fall as a result of its own internal contradictions and then less than 10 years later it does fall as a result of its internal contradictions (and a healthy push from aforementioned Gipper along with Thatcher, Pope John Paul, and a host of others), is this a “logical fallacy” or a “logical outcome” as a result of policies announced and pursued?

Duh.

Freedom is once again on the march because America wills it. Whenever America has put its mind to promoting freedom and individual liberty around the world, the results have been breathtaking to behold. The idea that it was an accident that democracy broke out in central America when Reagan promoted it by supporting the government of El Salvador, funding the contras, and liberating Grenada is delusional. It says a lot about the myopia of the left that every time they’ve been proven wrong by events, the reason has been an accident of history or blind luck. It’s never that their worldview is hopelessly and irrevocably flawed.

Certainly there are other forces at work in Lebanon, not the least of which is a resurgent nationalism made long dormant by the oppressive occupation of Syrian troops. But if you listen to the old Druze warlord Walid Jumblatt, you get the distinct feeling that George Bush just may have had something to do with Lebanon’s current march towards freedom:

“It’s strange for me to say it, but this process of change has started because of the American invasion of Iraq,” explains Jumblatt. “I was cynical about Iraq. But when I saw the Iraqi people voting three weeks ago, 8 million of them, it was the start of a new Arab world.” Jumblatt says this spark of democratic revolt is spreading. “The Syrian people, the Egyptian people, all say that something is changing. The Berlin Wall has fallen. We can see it.”

Of course, after democracy is established in places like Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, Iran, and perhaps even Saudi Arabia, what will we hear from the moonbats? “Our” strategy worked!

Jyah! As if! Moonbats live by the old adage…if you can’t beat ‘em, lie like hell.

One of the things I love about blogging is the feeling of having your fingers on the pulse of events as they transpire half a world away. Simply by following a few links or googling up information from sources both familiar and obscure, you can get the feeling that you have an understanding of large events; that you see the outlines of the big picture forming right before your eyes.

It’s an illusion, of course. Sometimes events move too fast or information is disseminated through biased sources or filtered through a prism of self-interest or disinformation. Tyring to sort through it is kind of like putting together pieces of a puzzle. Sometimes you can get more information from what is not said, or what action is not taken. And that’s where judgement, experience, and context come into play.

As an example, take the events currently transpiring in the middle east as a result of the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Like ripples in a pond, the consequences of this action by still unknown perpetrators are spreading through the entire region, subtlely changing alliances, affecting governments both large and small, and revealing weaknesses in one major player-Syria-that heretofore were hidden from view.

For nearly 30 years Syria has had occupying troops in Lebanon. This fact has not only colored politics in that long-suffering country, but has been the proximate cause for literally hundreds of terrorists attacks on Israel over the last quarter century. Syria, a secular dictatorship of the same type of Baathist thugs that ran Saddam ’s torture chambers, have cozied up to terrorist organizations like Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The terrorists operate with impunity with Syria’s blessing (they help keep the Christian minority in line). Meanwhile, Syria manipulates Lebanese politics so that they can maintain their troops in the vitally strategic Bekkaa Valley. The valley borders the northern tip of Israel and has been a staging area for terrorist strikes in the past as well as a training ground for terrorists groups around the world.

Hariri’s assassination may turn out to be the catalyst that overturns Syrian control of Lebanon, brings democracy to that country, and fatally weaken Hamas, Hezbollah, and the rest of the terrorist groups that are currently using Lebanon as a safe haven.

If this scenario plays out, it would be the biggest victory in the war on terror yet.

Rafik Hariri was a much respected political figure in the jumble that is Lebanese politics. He favored giving women and young people the vote as well as reconciling with Lebanon’s Christian minority. Although a Shia Muslim by birth, he had a knack for drawing support from all segements of Lebanese society. Two recent events may have sealed the former Prime Minister’s fate. On January 31st, Hariri met with the Pope in Rome, an event obviously opposed by the islamofascists who saw the meeting as confirmation that Hariri was cozying up to the Christian minority. Then, the very next day Hariri gave an interview to the Lebanon Daily Star in which he said he was “not concerned with sectarian issues” and was friends with everyone.

This may have been the last straw for the radical Islamic terrorists who are very concerned with sectarian issues, wanting more than anything to have Shar’ia law govern the country.

The question of who carried out the assassination has been complicated by the fact that some experts believe that none of the local groups of terrorists would have been capable of carrying out such a sophisticated operation. This would seem to point the finger at Syria. The United States thinks so. We’ve just withdrawn our Ambassador Margaret Scobey with the State Department saying “Yesterday’s bombing calls into question the stated reason behind the presence” of Syrian security forces in Lebanon… ”

The ripples are starting to spread.

The assassination, coupled with Syria’s continued brazen interference in Iraq’s politics, have now forced our hand. The withdrawl of the Ambassador in and of itself would not be overly significant except that now the Administration is talking about additional sanctions up to and including the freezing of Syrian assets in the United States. And if we could get Western Europe to go along with such a move, Syria would find itself broke and isolated. This would force President Assad into making some rather unpleasant (for him) decisions. If he were forced to withdraw his troops from Lebanon, it would certainly weaken his position at home (getting the military angry at you by humiliating them is not a good thing in a dictatorship).
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