It's time to weigh in on Syria. The recent massacre - including stabbings and execution-style shootings - of 108 preople ought to confirm the nature of the Assad regime if nothing else about the last eighteen months - indeed, the last forty years- has.
The West's response - expelling Syrian diplomats - speaks volumes about its waning influence on the world stage. While it's true that the Syrian opposition is barely organized and contains some elements that would be no better than Assad, living with the current horror is no sort of policy for a collection of nations that until recently was considered the leader on the world stage.
The key to this situation, as with so much in the middle east and southern Asia, is to be found in Teheran. The mullahs prop up Syria's Baathists and both regimes use proxy groups, particularly Hezbollah, to extend their mischief into places like Lebanon and Israel.
And what is our Iran policy? More patty-cake, even as the theocracy's rhetoric remains as belligerent as ever, and as the centrifuges keep spinning.
Assad sees an economically crippled continent when it looks at Europe and it sees a United States presided over by a regime whose policy is planned decline and abnegation of its role as world leader. There is no reason for it to stop the atrocities.
FHers routinely accuse proponents of American exceptionalism of endorsing arrogant swagger and hegemony - if not outright imperialism - but we are seeing the beginning stages of what a world looks like that doesn't have the guidance of the most wise and righteous nation in human history, which we were unitl the last few years.
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