Wracking Up The Numbers

The world is in suspense. Which side, when all the atrocities have been wrought, the mass bloodshed, the bombing of the country's infrastructure taking it all back to the stone age, will manage to arise the victor? How can any one side actually "win" in such an "anything goes" conflict, when there are no parameters beyond which one hesitates to inflict damage, a pitiless assault on humanity.

The majority Sunni population of the country at war with its tyrant. The tyrant, having dropped all pretense of humane regard for those not of his tribe, his religious sect, his political ideology, determined to erase them from the face of Syria.

Bashar al-Assad has now outdone his father in the numbers he has been responsible for murdering. Hafez al-Assad killed an estimated 40,000 in Hama. His son has long since passed that milestone and he hasn't confined his interior designs to merely one town. Much has changed between the generations.

Bashar al-Assad has Iran in support of his tenacious rule, and its proxy militia Hezbollah, schooled in warfare by Iran's Republican Guard and obedient to its commands, prepared to launch as many attacks against the people of Syria as is declared needed to punish them for the uprising of the rebels who now form the Syrian Free Army.

Syrian citizens gather near damaged cars that were burned after a car bomb exploded in the suburb of Jaramana, Damascus, Syria, on Thursday, July 25, 2013. (photo credit: AP Photo/SANA)

Needless to say the FSA is doing its determined best, with the considerable assistance of al-Qaeda linked al-Nusra and other Islamists who have flooded into Syria, to make this Ramadan of 2013 very special indeed. Damascus has been no more immune to attacks as has been Hama, the centre from which the original and this recast version of revolt emanated.

The deadly friction of hatred between Shia and Sunni has flourished full-bore in the last two years.

One side afflicts the other with the success of mayhem and murder, and the other is considerate enough to return the compliment. Perhaps in returning the notice of affliction, making a considerable effort to increase the damage, collateral and human. Human life has been utterly degraded, in any event, so what's another death here, there and anywhere? It is Ramadan, after all. When Islam enjoins its faithful to good deeds.

"There is no military solution to Syria", intones U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, for consumption at the United Nations. "There is only a political solution, and that will require leadership in order to bring people to the table."

And an awful lot of good luck with that one, chum.