Ayoon Wa Azan (Syria and political suicide)

If the regime in Syria had decided to commit suicide, it would not have done more than what it already did in defending its existence, starting with the events in Daraa, where things could have been resolved with the president and his wife making a visit to the area, and culminating with the chemical atrocity in Ghouta, which is reminiscent of Halabja and Saddam Hussein’s ultimate fate. A smart person is he or she who learns from their mistakes, and smarter still is he or she who learns from others’ mistakes. Well, the Syrian regime, over the past two and a half years, has demonstrably treated each mistake with an even bigger one, offering its own head on a plate to its enemies. The regime has many enemies, but there also exist enemies for the Syrian people, the Arabs, and Muslims, and the regime in Damascus has given these enemies what they all combined could have never achieved. If Homs had been hit with a nuclear bomb, would it look any different from what we see now on television? Did invaders like Hulagu Khan do worse than the regime and the terrorist opposition have done in Aleppo? Syria had the best coexistence among different sects, communities, and ethnicities, and the regime destroyed cohesion among Syrians along with the other things it has destroyed. The army, the protector of the homeland, was used to kill the citizens. Now, the opportunity has come to destroy this army, and foreign military intervention is now a matter of days after the regime gave foreign powers the excuse to carry out neocolonial and Israeli goals. The U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry claimed that there was conclusive evidence the regime had used chemical weapons, even before UN investigators have reported on their findings. This is while bearing in mind that determining which side used the chemical weapons is the purview of the UN alone, while only the UN Security Council has the authority to approve a military intervention. I do not expect boots on the ground, as President Barack Obama prefers to kill civilians using drones, and he intends to respond to claims that U.S. influence around the world has declined by means of air or missile strikes on Syrian bases, making the Syrian army another victim of the regime. This is an Israeli spring that even the government of neo-Nazis in Israel never dreamed of, until foolish regimes and revolutions hijacked by extremism and terrorism came to achieve Israel’s dreams. We are faced with the same chain of events that culminated with Saddam hanging, or Muammar Gaddafi killed in a sewage channel. Saddam Hussein occupied Kuwait and became stubbornly defiant against an international coalition and 800,000 soldiers, and lost the war humiliatingly. This subjected his country to an embargo, and then an invasion, and one million Iraqis have been killed as a result. The neoconservatives had sent a letter to Bill Clinton calling on him to invade Iraq but he refused. They repeated the same demand in a similar letter to George W. Bush, who also refused. But then the terror attacks of 9/11 took place, giving the enemies the pretext they needed to destroy the Arabs’ eastern gate, and hand it over to a regime in Tehran that is Persian-nationalist albeit in a religious guise. Thus, the ignorance of the regimes has allied itself with terrorism to serve the enemies of the Arabs and Muslims. Meanwhile, al-Qaeda achieved for Israel the same thing that the Syrian regime is achieving for the Jewish state, and before it, Saddam Hussein, Gaddafi, and their ilk (the Muslim Brotherhood failed in Egypt, but I do not compare them to what happened with Iraq, Syria, and Libya). Gone is the day we once bore witness to, when the regime of Dr. Bashar al-Assad was on good terms with the countries of the East and the West. But Assad chose to put his alliance with Iran above pacifying the United States and relations with the EU. What logic is there in an alliance with a country facing crippling international sanctions in addition to U.S. and EU sanctions, instead of opening up to the entire world? Now, Iran is threatening to respond by attacking Israel, which reminds me of Saddam Hussein’s threats during the occupation of Kuwait. Incidentally, Russia does not support Syria, as much as it opposes (or is hostile to) the West, while encouraging more mistakes. Incidentally as well, Hezbollah erred by becoming involved in the Syrian civil war, and I hope that Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah will find a way out before it is too late. This is while bearing in mind that I support Hezbollah against Israel, whether it errs or not. As Syrians see imminent threats of military intervention, they waver between joy and sorrow; joy to see the regime being struck, and sorrow to see their country being struck. While a solitary strike against military targets would not topple the regime, it will most definitely weaken it. A coup from within is also possible, though not probable, as the regime has put its supporters in a defensive position, more than in a position to defend a regime that has failed itself, its people, and its nation. The regime approved international inspectors who have a background in investigating previous chemical weapons attacks, but welcomed them with an attack that overshadowed all previous ones. This is political suicide whose first and last victim are the Syrian people. The views expressed by the author do not necessarily represent or reflect the editorial policy of Arab Today.