The Syrian "Spring"

Daily reports on the bloody repression of protestors in Syria by the corporate mass media have hewed a familiar line: genuine democrats have risen against a brutal dictator and the West must help them against the corrupt regime's tanks and guns. Sounds familiar because the simpleminded trope was last used only a year ago to wring a covering resolution from the UN Security Council for a NATO led coup against Muammar Qaddafi. Is there true democracy in Libya as a result of western oil motivated meddling? Just ask the myriad of armed militias currently terrorizing their tribal opponents there. Russia has not forgotten it was duped into going along with the R2P Benghazi red herring, and that may be one reason it has vetoed intervention in Syria so far. As someone on Capitol Hill astutely observed Syria is not Libya. The struggle in Syria is a sectarian one between the Alawi and Sunni. Al-Assad controls a strong, by Middle Eastern standards, army and security apparatus. The only chance the Sunni insurgency has to defeat it, is to interest the West in supporting the insurgency or at least equipping it with heavy weapons. So before western ruling elites convince themselves another intervention to kill a dictator is necessary, they should ask themselves whether promoting a civil war in Syria that would probably have as an analog the sectarian struggles in Lebanon or Iraq rather than a relatively quick assination in Libya is in their best interests. There is no oil elixir to cloud their judgment, and Sunnis are just as bigoted as Alawites. There is no guarantee a Sunni dominated regime would respect the minority rights of Syria's Christians and Alawites or peacefully accept the existence of Israel. Sunni suicide bombers killed 28 and injured 235 in government controlled Aleppo. The Syrian army has shelled the majority Sunni town of Homs for eleven days in a row. Syria's rulers, unlike Qaddafi, have significant friends, and they are backing Assad.