WHATEVER THEY’RE SMOKING IN THEIR HOOKAH PIPES
(….it isn’t the tobacco of reality!)

The recent efforts by the Arab League to quell the Assad regime’s killing spree against the ongoing popular protests against it are an extreme example of an exercise in futility.

Regimes of its kind have rarely given up their grips on the levers of power (since it’s a means for personal enrichment) without a fight to the bitter end. And the end to this one is likely to be a very bitter one indeed.

It’s obvious that Assad and his mafia-like clique of Dons and Capos prefer descending into infamy, inch by bloody inch, rather than giving up. Since there is no place outside of Syria to which they can go for refuge, we shouldn’t be surprised by their hard line position. And to what extent they may continue to receive support as Iran’s proxy in the region is a good question. Iran has a growing problem of its own with the international community, so Syria may no longer seem a useful cat’s paw. Now, even Turkey and Saudi Arabia have edged away from supporting it because of its murderous responses to legitimate protests.

And although the Arab League’s observers report is much stronger and sterner than anyone expected, and now in the hands of the UN’s Security Council, Russian support for any further and stiffer sanctions against the Assad regime is not very likely. Thus its veto will negate whatever that international community’s voice of inaction decides to do about the situation.

Let’s face it, folks, with mad dog regimes like the Assad’s, the Joan Rivers approach….can we talk?….has about as much effect as a gastro-intestinal emission into a hurricane’s winds. Its bloody-mindedness is not a case of blood lust, but one of survival, hoping by such a method it can outlast the opposition’s will to suffer such losses.

The only problem with that is the longer the situation drags on the less likely any halfway acceptable resolution will ever happen. At the rate things are going we are more likely to see an all out civil war, ending badly for everyone. The Syrian people will have to continue enduring endless slaughter. As for the regime’s principals and its adherents, many may end up hanging by their heels in a public market place, like so many butchers’ displays of meat carcasses, or, being hunted by vigilantes on their own sprees of murderous revenge.

And for anyone who believes otherwise, whatever they’re smoking in their hookah pipes… isn’t the tobacco of reality!

CENTURION