Epstein Secrets

forces desecrating mosques, firing at EFTA_R1_00234074 EFTA01845128 worshipers, and ordering hapless captives to proclaim, "There is no God but Bashar," has written its own regional banishment. Hafez committed cruelties of his own, but he always managed to remain within the Arab fold. Bashar is di

t outgrew the Arabian Peninsula and before it slipped out of the hands of the Arabs into those of the Persians and the Turks. Yet decades earlier, Bashar al-Assad's father, Hafez -- a man of supreme cunning and political skill -- had ridden the military and the Baath Party to absolute power, creating a regime i

ns a chance. The Egyptian rulers had said that their country was not Tunisia. Qaddafi said that his republic was not Tunisia or Egypt. Eventually, Assad was saying that Syria was not Tunisia, Egypt, or Libya. Assad was young, not old; his regime had more legitimacy because it had confronted Israel r

led its affairs with relative ease. It elected a constituent assembly in which al Nanda, an Islamist party, secured a plurality. Al Nanda's leader, Rachid al-Ghannouchi, was a shrewd man; years in exile had taught him caution, and his party formed a coalition government with two secular partners. In Libya, foreign

an anyone had predicted, and with potentially cataclysmic consequences nobody dares imagine. This Friday, the shock came in Syria, where President Bashar al-Assad runs one of the Middle East's most repressive regimes. Across the country, protesters have grown ever more emboldened in recent weeks, and on Frida

e grown ever more emboldened in recent weeks, and on Friday they poured into the streets by the tens of thousands to face the deadly fusillades of Assad's security forces. More than 70 died. What did the White House have to say? From Air Force One: "We call on all sides to cease and desist from the

hoose the same system for which the ten post-communist countries that have been admitted to the European Union opted, parliamentarianism. Finally, Rachid al-Ghannouchi, who leads the largest Muslim- inspired political party, Al Nanda, went out of his way to tell me that he has signed an agreement with some secular

al leaders to choose the same system as the ten post- communist countries that have been admitted to the European Union: parliamentarianism. Finally, Rachid al-Ghannouchi, who leads the largest Islamic- inspired political party, Al Nahda, went out of his way to tell me that he has signed an agreement with some secular

oratory, you couldn't have done much better. Syria presents a profoundly different situation. U.S. policy has always been driven by the hope that the Assads would change and the fear of what might replace them if they fell. Three additional realities ensured a U.S. response quite different from the one fo

ng different. There simply is no reform option, and there never was. Genuine reform means dislodging the bricks holding up Assad- Makhlouf authority. Bashar Assad's open-ended presidency, the crony capitalism practiced by his cousin and other members of Syria's elite, the abuse practiced by the all-powerful secur