Hold Assad Accountable

Bashar Assad has not suffered real consequence for turning his nation's military might against peaceful protesters. This emboldened Assad to believe he could distract the world from his brutality at home by launching (or at the very least, permitting) an incursion across Syria's border into Israel. Assad is so confident that he may now even ignite a regional war, if the United States and the West do not rapidly convince him that he will have no sanctuary and no chance of survival if he continues doing Iran's malicious bidding. As there are no relations between Syria and Israel, one can assume back channel communication has been transmitted by the Jewish State that such provocation will not be tolerated and can not be allowed to continue. Unfortunately, Bashar Assad may misread the conflicting signal the world has transmitted and go right on his merry way to starting World War III, an odd thing for a Western-trained physician who recently was still being termed a "reformer" by America's Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The Middle East remains on the razor's edge.