The days of dictators in the Middle East are numbered. America got Saddam Hussein. Tunisians got Ben Ali. Egyptians got Mubarak. Libyans, with NATOs help, got Qaddafi. Suddenly, mass murderers and lovers of human torture receive a taste of their own medicine.
Can Syrias Bashar Assad be far behind?
Surely Syrias mass murderer, who opens fire on unarmed crowds, who blames the crowds on conspiracies abroad, who clings to power strictly by the force of violence, deserves the same fate as his fellow Arab mass murderers. It may take time and the twists and turns that will bring Assads downfall are unpredictable. Hussein was captured in a hole and put to death by judicial fiat. Ben Ali fell from power due to a revolution, as did Mubarak, who now awaits his judicial fate. Qaddafi faced both a revolution and outside intervention, and defied the odds for months on end. In the end, he, too, fell to the inevitable. So will Bashir Assad.
It is remarkable how each dictator believes himself to be uniquely invulnerable. Then again, it is in the nature of a dictator to be insensitive to his surroundings insensitive to the mass suffering and individualized torture he imposes. It is no surprise that each dictator clings to his dream of eternal power.
Of course, many dictators die peacefully in their beds. Of late, however, the fate of dictators has blessedly been foreshortened. However invulnerable Bashar Assad may still believe he is, we would bet a bundle that he is not sleeping the way he did a year ago before the outbursts in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya not to mention, before the revolt in his own country.
Not so pleasant to be a dictator these days the sooner the murderous Assad line comes to an end, the better.
Copyright © 2011 by the Intermountain Jewish News
