Squeezing The Heart

"What happened in Houla and elsewhere [in Syria] are brutal massacres which even monsters would not have carried out.  If we don't feel the pain that squeezes our hearts, as I felt it, for the cruel scenes - especially the children - then we are not human beings."  President Bashar al-Assad

Quite so.  And he knows who is responsible for the Houla massacre.  It is a devious plot by international forces to destroy his reputation, to turn the love and respect of ordinary Syrians against their leader.  Those malevolent forces attempting to destroy him have dispatched terrorists to do their dirty work.  Islamists, those who would turn Syria into a bloodbath of violence.

And they're doing a fairly credible job of it.  Even if they wear the uniforms of the regime's forces.


The Free Syria Army, in its response to the allegations by their tyrant, has suspended its respect for Kofi Annan's ceasefire.  In celebration of which decision, no fewer than 80 members of the regime's military were killed.  As tit-for-tat goes, each side is performing a fair facsimile of their version of civil war, preparing at any moment to engulf the entire country in a polarized conflict.

One that will, inevitably, draw in other countries in the neighbourhood as the entire geographic community becomes embroiled in a sectarian melee geared to unleash the heritage of hatred that forever simmers below the surface of accommodation to practical living.  It is sheer, unadulterated passion, the emotion of suspicion and hatred that will inevitably see itself expressed as an all-out, freely-engaged in slaughter.

One that was unleashed for a time with few holds barred in Iraq as Sunni mobs marauded Shia neighbourhoods and Shia avenger-mobs returned the courtesy, each side countering the other in an excess of gore, flooding the soil of their shared country with blood and the lifeless bodies of men, women and children.  Looting, sacking and mutilations completed the picture.

And here is Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minister of Turkey deploring the actions of his one-time ally.  "So far, I haven't seen him approach reforms with a democratic understanding.  He is still approaching issues with ... an autocratic approach.  I believe that it is very hard to achieve peace in Syria as long as this approach continues."

Mr. Erdogan, of course, knows intimately all about "autocratic" approaches.  It's difficult to understand how this man equates his respect for Hezbollah and Hamas, alongside his great good friends in Iran, as respectable democracies and ardent supporters of Islamic principles, knowing them to be solidly in support of President al-Assad.

But then, self-serving hypocrisy is closely aligned with the "autocratic" approach, and Mr. Erdogan is a past master at both.  Even as President al-Assad derides Islamist "terrorists", he slanders his closest allies, and his closest critic.