L.A. event: Report Back from Syria

One has to be careful to avoid the mistakes that the Reaganauts made in Afghanistan, namely “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Just because the current Administration tries to do something silly like topple the one remaining Baathist regime in the Middle East should not elevate that regime to martyr status or status as a glorious example of how governments ought to act. There are plenty of good reasons not to interfere with Syria, not the least of which is that there’s nobody in the Bush administration who has even a remote understanding of the nature of the politics in the region and would have about as much control over events after toppling the government as was had in Iraq. (If you think Iraq is fractured ethnically, just wait till you visit Syria.) But this is an argument for prudence, not for the decency of the Syrian government. In terms of pegging the government as particularly vile, the Bushies are demonstrating nothing more than the old maxim that “even a stopped clock is right twice a day.”