Saturday, September 01, 2012
Well we’ve finally arrived at a civil war, and no I don’t think that this was avoidable or an accident. It is a deliberate policy and gamble by Assad to hold on to a sliver of power. Reforms were always out of the question because the slightest slip would have spelled the end of his family’s grip on power. Let us be clear about it, this is one family’s grip on a country, not a party’s, not a minority’s, but one family only and with its barons and loyal core of supporters. Assadism is the litmus test upon which you can test the revolutionary credentials of the artificial opposition that is sprouting domestically. These smart suited and highly educated technocrats with their talk of reform and convenient focus on only the transgressions of the regime’s opponents never openly criticize or call for the overthrow of Assad. They have permission to tear the regime to shreds (verbally, of course) but the person of Bashar al Assad is inviolable, and the mere mention of his name in a way that could be construed – even remotely – to be a criticism is avoided.
