What was Bashar al-Assad thinking when he began accepting strategic missiles — and, by all accounts, nuclear warheads to fit on them — from North Korea, merely as part of an Iranian strategy to save the clerical leaders from overthrow? The Israeli air raid of September 6, 2007, not only killed a significant number of Syrians and North Koreans, it served notice that Bashar was getting ready to participate in a massive war against Israel, a war which will cost many tens of thousands of Syrian lives.
For what?
Bashar has forgotten that he is supposed to be the President of the Syrian People. He thinks now only about protecting his position, and he believes that only by kowtowing to the Iranian clerics can he be saved. And saved from whom? Clearly, the very Syrian People whom he is supposed to be leading.
It is now an open secret that Bashar has committed the Syrian forces to be part of a massive front which will comprise Iran, Syria, North Korea, HizbAllah, HAMAS in Gaza, and forces in Somalia, and elsewhere, and which will rise against Israel and the US at some time in the near future. Again the question: What does this do for Syria and the Syrian People? Why does Syria need to attack its neighbors and the West? What do we gain from this?
Once again, Bashar has bloodied his hands in Lebanon, killing more politicians and innocent Lebanese civilians, merely so he can protect the HizbAllah position there, because Iran has demanded that HizbAllah be protected, and supported, and prepared for the new war against Israel. What seems likely is that the Iranian clerics are prepared to fight to the last Syrian, and even the last Iranian civilian, to protect their grasp on power.
It’s time for the Syrian military to begin saying “no” to Bashar, and to start protecting Syria from the likes of Bashar and his apocalyptic clerical friends. His late father, Hafez, certainly knew the difference between a strategic geopolitical alliance with Iran, and selling his soul to the pseudo-clerics who are now the dictators of Iran. No wonder Bashar does not want to see, or hear of, his uncle, Rifa’at al-Assad, who, from exile, is the voice of reason, saying: no to unnecessary war with Israel or the US; no to the unnecessary occupation of Lebanon; no to the subjugation of the Syrian People and their right to an economic free market.
Watch for it: Bashar is dragging Syria into a new, major war, and at the end of the day the only thing which will emerge unblemished from the carnage will be Bashar himself, untouched in his bunker while Syria burns.
No decent Syrian would deny the duty of sacrifice for the nation and for future generations of Syrians. But what decent Syrian would say that dying to keep Bashar in power — and a servant of Tehran — equates to patriotism?
Syria’s Next Leader
Dr. Rifa’at al-Assad knows the corridors of power in Damascus, and he wants a market-oriented, modern Syria, at peace with its neighbors.
Bashar and Ahmadi-Nejad
Mutually dependent co-conspirators: Bashar al-Assad of Syria and Mahmud Ahmadi-Nejad of Iran