Delusional, deluded or deluding?
The full transcript of the Barbara Walters interview with Bashar al Assad is worth a read, if only because it will likely one day be seen a presaging the fall of the Assad regime, like Qaddafi’s mad rants in Libya. Bashar’s denial is total:
OK, we don’t kill our people, nobody kill. No government in the world kill its people, unless it’s led by crazy person. For me, as president, I became president because of the public support. It’s impossible for anyone, in this state, to give order to kill people.
Mistakes may have been made, but they are not his or the government’s. Individuals have made mistakes are being held accountable. He feels no guilt. The press is free. Foreign correspondents are welcome. There was no order for a crackdown, just the legitimate institutions of the state defending themselves from terrorists, as any state would have to do.
The terrifying part of all of this is that he gives the distinct impression of believing it. That would be delusional. It is difficult to imagine how someone so out of touch with reality can be convinced to stop the brutality.
In theory it is also possible that he is deluded: maybe his younger brother Maher, responsible for the security forces, doesn’t bother telling him what is happening? Certainly if he watches too much Syrian TV, he wouldn’t know that the protests are mainly peaceful and the security forces ferociously violent. He could then believe that there really are terrorists inciting this instability and attacking the Syrian state.
That would be truly deluded, but there is still another possibility: he is attempting to delude. Not so much the Western public, which by now knows better, but his own people, who will be treated to this interview repeatedly. Listen to Deborah Amos on the PBS Newshour Tuesday evening:
Watch Syria’s Assad Denies Ordering Deadly Crackdown as Sanctions Drive Down Currency on PBS. See more from PBS NEWSHOUR.
This fits with what Bashar says about his strategy in the interview:
…the majority of the Syrian people are in the middle and then you have people who support you and you have people who are against you. So the majority always in the middle. Those majority are not against you. If they are against you you cannot have stable most of the city…
Walters: You feel the majority of the people in this country support you?
Assad: I say the majority are in the middle and the majority are not against — to be precise.
He is trying to win over the majority, who are caught in the middle between the state and the terrorists.
I lean towards this last interpretation. Bashar al Assad is not a rocket scientist (only a physician), but he is more than smart enough to know what is going on and rational enough to stop it if he did not think it was in his interest. His focus is where it should be: winning the hearts and minds of the majority that is not yet against him, or at least keeping them neutral.
This understanding should inform the strategy of the opposition and the international community. Actions that turn this majority in Bashar al Assad’s direction (violence, sanctions that target vital commodities, rhetoric that suggests NATO is coming to the rescue) should be avoided. Actions that win over the substantial Syrian middle and lower classes (providing humanitarian assistance, international monitoring of the sort the UN has already undertaken or the Arab League has proposed, sanctioning non-vital trade and investment, denouncing regime violence, nonviolent boycotts, strikes and demonstrations) are the way to go.
Bashar is trying to outlast his opponents; they need to prepare for the long haul, even if we all hope this will end soon.
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