A Defiant Asad Sticks to His Guns

Article 4. Agence Global A Defiant Asad Sticks to His Guns Patrick Seale 21 Jun 2011 -- All those dreaming of -- and working for -- ‘regime change’ in Syria will be outraged by President Bashar al-Asad’s speech last Monday, 20 June. They want him out, together with the hate figures around him who have been conducting the brutal repression of the protest movement. But he is not stepping down. He intends to stay on -- and to fight on. Asad gave no ground to his political enemies. The speech was not, in fact, addressed to them. It was addressed to Syria’s ‘silent majority’ which -- or so the President continues to believe -- aspires to security, stability and national unity, and is terrified, above all, of a sectarian war on the Iraqi model. The President explained that, in order to understand the nature of the crisis, he had held several meetings in recent weeks with citizens from all parts of the country. He wanted to hear directly from them. The conclusion he had reached was that there were several different components to the protest movement. First, there were those who had legitimate demands, who wanted justice, democracy and jobs, and the resolution of problems which had accumulated over decades. Their demands could not be ignored. He intended to address them and had already started to do so. But then there were the others -- the criminal outlaws, the blasphemous intellectuals who spoke in the name of religion, the vandals, conspirators and paid agents of foreign powers. Under cover of the protest movement, they had taken up arms against the state! These conspirators, he said, had called for foreign intervention, they had smeared Syria’s image and destroyed public and private property. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_030167