Syria

Angry Arab has expended several posts on correcting various points in an Economist article on Syria, yet he turned right around and said it is the best article he has seen on the situation in that country.

I agree that it is an excellent article.

If the Middle East could be pictured as being built like an arch, then Syria strikes me as being in certain ways its keystone country, more so than Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia, or any of the others.

The main question I've been having about Syria has to do with the tactic being used there, and in Bahrain, of dealing with the demonstrators against the current regime by shooting the protestors down where they stand, in large numbers.    What then, would the Bashar regime end up with, should it manage to hang on to power?  As my wife likes to ask whenever we see huge amounts of damage being done in movie and TV thrillers by the heroes or the police, usually through the use of vehicles and out of all proportion to anything that makes sense: "How will they explain this?"