In the annals of Western cretinism on Syria, I reserve a special place for one Olivia Sterns. The country has gotten a bad rap, she wrote in an article last May, and President Obama should recognize it has a softer side. "One look at the country's first lady Asma al-Assad should help prove so to disbelievers. The British-born, jeans-wearing wife of the current President Bashar represents a radically more modern regime."
But what about the killing of Lebanon's former prime minister, Rafiq Hariri, certainly the work of Syria's radically more modern regime? This was not the doing of "President Bashar," Sterns implied in a passage soggy with obfuscation: "Presently, the dark days of the reign of Bashar's father, President Hafez al-Assad, appear long gone. A United Nations tribunal of [sic] the 2005 assassination of … Hariri is now underway. That investigation should go a long way to exposing the remaining loyalist elements and corruption in the current regime."
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