The World Afire

What did I say about Syria using Force Chincane? Well torching two embassies in the centre of your power is not a very smart way of playing that game Asad. Not very deniable when it is known you rule your country just as tightly as Ill Kim does the hermit starving nuclear kingdom of North Korea, so for 'spontaneous' protests to erupt in Damascus is just impossible.

Update: President Bush has issued a statement, quoted in the Washington Post, against Syria:

"We will hold Syria responsible for such violent demonstrations since they do not take place in that country without government knowledge and support," said presidential press secretary Scott McClellan.

See Ba'athist President Asad, your clever machinations are as stealthy as a troop of cloggers.

It would have been better to use your proxies over in Beirut to torch the Danish legation there first. Then let your people express their 'rightous' anger by torching your Danish embassy. It would be a bit more deniable but just as unlikely as your citizens, on their own, torching them first. Anyone ever tell you that playbook has been used before? Like at the Reichstag?

Meanwhile the Norweigians, who had agreed to give the Hamas controlled Palestinian Authority money, were also burned out of their embassy. Proving once again, the giving of danegeld does not buy you friends. Hopefully Israel will come to its senses and not pay the $54million in taxes to the Palestinian Authority. They should not help fund Hamas, this is money that is supposed to help keep the infrastructure running. Supposed to, that is the theory. If Hamas gets it, more weapons will be bought and more thugs paid.

Secretary of State Rice, as she strives with the Herculean task of cleaning out the State Department stables, needs to keel-haul whomever let that press relase out chiding newspapers for not respecting Islamic sensitivities. The overt and inadvertant coddling of the Arab world that is seen throughout Western governments, NGOs, and media organisations has got to stop, if they[Arabs] want to exist in this shrunken global village then they have to grow up and behave. The diplomatic 'professionals' who think the only way to make nice with the angry Arab street, while securing a plush future job with Arab countries, is to bend over with derrier high in the air need to be cashiered. So to those who think the Arabs are savages incapable of handling such a concept as democracy, they need to be removed from influence for they and their superior airs are infuriating because their condescension gets under everyone's skin.

Are we approaching this tipping point? I do not know. But with the fanned unrest in Lebanon threatening to splinter that fragile country and that angry Arab street torching embassies, some over there want us in the West to blink and grovel. Did that angry Arab street rise up to save the Taliban or Saddam? Nope. They are rabble useful for cowing the already timid but they lack any true vision. Watch the puppet-masters in Syria and Iran to see how things are really going.

Never move from the principles you believe in, there lies victory. Once you start to doubt, the path to the dark side is easy to follow for your doubts will guide you to second guess and vascillate while your opponent will see you dither and press even harder for more concessions since to them irresolution is weakness. And soon everything you hold dear will be owned by someone else, even your freedom.

Patrick Henry's battle cry still resonates today:

"Give me Liberty or Give me Death!"