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Syria’s Future Is Vengeance

Shlomi Eldar writes that post-Assad Syria will be a vast campaign of retaliation.
Residents pray near the bodies of people whom activists said were killed during fighting with forces loyal to Syria's President Bashar Al-Assad at Marat AL-Numan, during their funeral in Kafranbel, near Idlib December 26, 2012. REUTERS/Raed Al-Fares/Shaam News Network/Handout (SYRIA - Tags: POLITICS CIVIL UNREST CONFLICT)
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When the Asharq Alawsat newspaper reported that the U.S. and Russia had reached an agreement that [Syrian President] Bashar al-Assad's term in office would soon end, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was quick to refute the news. “Assad isn’t going anywhere,” he announced, “and it doesn’t matter what anyone says.” By “anyone,” he most certainly meant China and Russia.

He was right, of course. Assad really isn’t going anywhere unless he is led away by force because, just like Louis XIV of France, Assad rules under the conviction that L’état, c’est moi. Like other despots in the region, he sees this bitter battle as more than just a personal struggle to survive. Assad believes that the life and future of an entire nation is at stake, and that he bears the ultimate responsibility for that nation’s future. Then again, [Former Egypt President] Mubarak also thought that his fate was inextricably linked to the fate of Egypt, and he continued to believe that even as he was borne on a stretcher to the defendants’ cage in a Cairo courtroom. [The Libyan ruler Moammar] Gadhafi remained convinced that the people loved and esteemed him, like children who love and esteem their father, even while those same children were tearing him to shreds. It should, therefore, come as no surprise that Bashar al-Assad is still convinced that he is “a lion, the son of a lion.”

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