As the Syrian regime’s brutal and bloody crackdown on protesters proceeds apace, I stumbled upon this extraordinary cyber-shrine to President Bashar al-Assad, on which virtually everything he has ever said, every meeting he has ever held, everything remotely complimentary that anyone has ever said about him, is lovingly recorded.
And the graphics are, um, remarkable.
The compliments were coming thick and fast for awhile, but they seem to have sputtered out. The latest, dated March 27, 2011, is from Assad’s friend and comrade Hugo Chavez:
“His Excellency President Bashar Al-Assad is a humanist, doctor, educated in London, in no way an extremist; he is a man of great human sensitivity. We salute him from here.”
And to prove that kowtowing to dictators knows no political boundaries, here is what Conservative MP Nicholas Soames said as recently as February 27:
”I have touched the great trust of the Syrian People in President Bashar Al-Assad, who is committed to carry out huge reforms in his country.”
Former president Jimmy Carter demonstrated his remarkable lack of political acumen (or his willingness to kowtow) in 2009, when he said:
“President Bashar Al-Assad is very intelligent, very forceful. From my experience, His Excellency is very popular in his own country.”
That should have been a warning to Assad of trouble ahead. Recall Carter’s toast on the eve of 1978 to the soon-to-be-deposed Shah of Iran, in which he noted “the respect, the admiration and the love which your people give to you.”
