The "Assad" Test

When Bashar Assad came to power, there was an illusory expectation that because portions of his education were in the West and because of an appearance of modernity that Syria would rise out of the benighted despotism of his late father, the bloody-handed dictator Hafez Assad. The late Assad had notoriously massacred dissidents in the thousands. In the event, Assad the Younger is proving to be every bit as brutal as Hafez was. Transition of power in Arab states all too often, including in recent times, takes on horrific hues. The change is never from one grey man to another as we routinely see in our developed democracies. Never is it a smooth ride from a Anthony Eden to a Harold Macmillan but at the least, a palace intrigue and all the more likely, a bloodbath. The Arab people want and deserve better but Arab Spring turns to winter with the slightest breeze. No great gust is necessary in areas where there is no developed tradition of representative government and where people almost invariably subordinate the universal principles of human rights to Koranic edicts of submission.