Shudder, World

"How much worse could things get than a regime that was Iran's only Arab ally; gave Iran a port on the Mediterranean and a border with Israel; helped Iran arm Hezbollah to the teeth; built a nuclear reactor with North Korean help; brought jihadis to Iraq to kill American soldiers, and viciously repressed the Syrian people. The strategic argument for getting Assad out is powerful: it would be a huge defeat for Iran and Hezbollah and the greatest defeat we could administer to Iran short of ending its nuclear program." Elliot Abrams, U.S. Council on Foreign Relations

Israel's actions in bombing the Syrian site of a growing nuclear facility were confirmed spot on when the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency declared its intention to report Syria to the UN Security Council for having built an undeclared nuclear reactor. Since, purportedly rebuilt. The deadly axis of Pakistan, North Korea, Libya, Syria and Iran, rogue states all, and all urgently requiring nuclear status and an inventory of nuclear warheads. Shudder, World.

The civil world of democratic countries, with the welcome addition of several Arab countries, has been involved in trying to deter Libyan leader Moammar Ghadafi from slaughtering too many more of his population than he has already succeeded in doing. The tortured, fragmented, bellicose, volatile world of tribal antipathies, religious sectarianism and Arab/Muslim unease and propensity to violent upheaval is rocking the Middle East/North Africa.

The dread state of Syria which boasts a number of unusual distinctions, among them having in storage the second-largest store of weapons of mass destruction in the form of deadly chemical agents, representing a country that has pivoted from an uneasy alliance with the West, finally resting with a more comfortable natural fit with the Islamic Republic of Iran as befits two piranha-states, seems on the cusp of imploding.

A tyrant whom Western diplomats considered misunderstood and possibly just needing a little more trust and confidence from democratic countries to encourage him to cast his lot with civility and modernity has chosen instead that which comes far more naturally to him given his heritage and his genetic disadvantage. The savagery with which he has tasked his Republican Guard under his brother's direction speaks volumes about that heritage.

And the delicate balance that now sits uneasily in the Arab world threatens to topple more regimes with which the people find simmering, silent fault; should there be an outcome resulting in civil war, Syria's neighbours may very well find themselves embroiled as well for the same tribal, sectarian and ethnic resentments fuelling hatred and conflict remain the tinder to the all-consuming fire that may spontaneously flare

Syria's Bashar al-Assad knows with confidence that there will be no foreign intervention. His sovereign country does not present to NATO forces the same invitation to intervene that Libya's did; to do so would result in a logistical nightmare, a prolonged misery for the international community unwilling in any event to launch another war. So the war will remain an internal one. And Syria's civilians will continue to be bloodily violated.

"It is utterly deplorable for any government to attempt to bludgeon its population into submission, using tanks, artillery and snipers. In my view, this is nothing more than a government waging a war on its own people, people who are asking for fundamental human rights that are accepted in most democratic countries", according to an appalled Navi Pillay, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Is not Syria one of the countries invited to sit as a member in good standing of the UN's Human Rights Commission? Shudder, World.