No Welch For You

Pace Jay Solomon's Syrian sources (Imad Mustapha), my own sources tell me that Assistant Secretary of State David Welch will not be meeting with the Syrian “private citizens” (or to be more accurate, the “private property” of Maher Assad and Firas Tlass) currently on a Search for Common Ground and ICG-organized visit in DC to sell snake oil, illusions and lies to people eager to be deluded… again.

One of them, better known as the King of Comedy, wrote this beauty for Common Ground News Service:

But Syrians also forced Bechara El Khoury's successor, Kamil Shamoun, to resign in the late 1950s, this time supplying the Lebanese with arms, funds, and logistics to bring down what Damascus described as an anti-Syrian and anti-Arab nationalist government in Beirut.

What the West fails to understand is that, from the Syrian perspective, it was not the least bit awkward or embarrassing to do any of this in Lebanon. From the Syrian perspective, the intruders were meddling in Syria.

Right, and roughly 50 years later they killed Rafik Hariri and a bunch of others, and sent a penetrated Islamist group to destabilize the country, just like the King of Comedy's buddy, the regime's court jester, said: “Syria has the ability to funnel arms to Hezbollah and Palestinian groups as well as radical Sunni groups which allows it to destabilize Lebanon if its interests are ignored.”

No biggie. What's “the West's” problem?! This should be “praised”!