Syria Takes a Walk on The Wild Side

Captain's Quarters has lucid commentary on the apparent descent into flailing imbecility by Syria's {s}elected [hat/tip:Amarji] major domo, the regression-to-the-mean numbnut Bashar Assad.

Indeed, Amarji has a long-winded, but informative take on just how Boy Assad managed to alienate the French, Germans, US, and everyone else in the region except his bagman/supporter Iran.

The pencil-necked nitwit went into hiding for a month after Israeli jets buzzed his villa near Latakia, then emerged from occultation [technical Shi'ite/Alawite term] to thumb his nose at Sunni Arab states that didn't support Shi'ite terrorists Hezbollah during the recent hostilities. As if he were some sort of Goliath/Samson during the whole ruckus.

The Egyptian, Jordanian, and Saudi media undressed him well enough, but the fact remains that this "village idiot" [Amarji uses the stronger term "imbecile"] has defected his minoritarian [Alawites comprise 12% of the population, Sunnis 65%] loyalties from Arab solidarity to push his regime toward Iran.

Furthermore, to compound his betrayal with a greater crime, a mistake, he has pledged to mothball Syrian armed forces to promote a Hezbollah-style movement in Syria---which even a C student realizes would leave Syrian military bases open to Israeli retaliation if attacks came from Syrian soil.

The elephant-in-the-room aspect of this lies in Bashar's serial miscalculations eventually undermining his military praetorian ascendancy.

What would lie ahead, even in materialist western-looking Syria, might be a Sunni leadership [with strong memories of Assad-daddy's demolition of Hama's Brotherhood stronghold with 20,000 dead].

It would probably be a bloody coup and another military regime, albeit Sunni, but even an autocratic Muslim regime might emulate Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank, though petrodollars from Riyadh and the Gulfies might buy their loyalty.

If not, the fat would definitely be in the fire across the region, as Cairo and Amman and Riyadh, let alone Baghdad, would be hard-set to hold back their own Sunni religissimos from asserting their preferences.