Our War Party has been temporarily diverted from its clamor for war on Iran by the insurrection against the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad.
Estimates of the dead since the Syrian uprising began a year ago approach 6,000. And responsibility for the carnage is being laid at the feet of the president who succeeded his dictator-father Hafez al-Assad, who ruled from 1971 until his death in 2000.
Unlike Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, who buckled, broke, and departed after three weeks of protests, Bashar is not going quietly.
And, predictably, with the death toll rising, those champions of world democratic revolution — John McCain, Joe Lieberman, and Lindsey Graham — have begun beating the drums for U.S. aid to a “Free Syrian Army.”
Last week, the three senators jointly declared: “In Libya, the threat of imminent atrocities in Benghazi mobilized the world to act. Such atrocities are now a reality in Homs and other cities all across Syria. … We must consider … providing opposition groups inside Syria, both political and military, with better means to … defend themselves, and to fight back against Assad’s forces.”
“The end of Assad’s rule would … be a moral and humanitarian victory for the Syrian people” and “a strategic defeat for the Iranian regime.”
