Maysaloon - ميسلون

It is really amazing how naive and obtuse some commentators on Syria are choosing to be these days. They find it incomprehensible that somebody might have one position before 2011 and a different one afterwards. Before the revolution many Syrians supported the regime's foreign policy but ignored the domestic politics because - and rightly so - they thought the situation was getting slightly better. By slightly better that meant that the security services were becoming slightly more relaxed, and you heard less and less of torture and outright oppression as was the case with Hafez' days.

Some people might have even thought the new regime under Bashar was better and genuinely patriotic, and that he was a nice guy. Hell, I even thought he was a nice guy for a long time before this revolution started. Now it is clear that he is a tinpot dictator who relies on brutality to maintain power at any cost. I feel ashamed to have admired him once. The fact that Syria's foreign policy was something that coincided with support for the Palestinians and which gave Syria a far higher political clout should not be an excuse to continue support for this regime as a "last bastion of Arab nationalism", as it was described by Galloway.

There might be a conspiracy against Assad, and there might be all sorts of unsavoury characters who cry crocodile tears for the Syrian people and who are eager to support the revolution in any way, but that does not make the Syrian revolution any less deserving of support, nor the grievances of the Syrian people any less legitimate. Enough silliness.