ERUPTION IN SYRIA – AT 8:45 P.M. ET:  Syria is far more important in the Middle East than is Libya.  Syria is simmering.  The government doesn't hesitate to shoot its own citizens in the streets, while the world reacts with remarkable indifference.   I guess some people just have pull.  From London's Telegraph:

Supporters of Syria's president Bashir al-Asad opened fire during fresh protests on Friday killing at least 22 people, as tentative government concessions showed no signs of winning over the opposition.

Witnesses said the worst clashes began after demonstrators marched from three mosques in the southern city of Deraa after Friday prayers.

Security forces in plain clothes fired tear gas then rubber bullets and finally live ammunition on stone-throwing youths. At least 17 people were reported killed.

There were protests in cities across Syria sparking violent responses from the authorities. Three people were killed in the town of Harasta, two in Homs and, significantly, there was a report that water cannon had been used to put down a demonstration in Hama, the town where Mr Asad's father and predecessor, Hafez al-Asad, killed 20,000 people in putting down an Islamist uprising in 1982.

COMMENT:  Yes, that was 20,000.  Do you recall any outrage?  I don't.  There was apparently nothing in it for the political left, and its cronies in the press, so Hama passed without too much notice, just like Rwanda, Cambodia, and other names now associated with horror.  The left is very selective, you know.

Our attention has been spread so thin, with new things popping up every day, that we risk forgetting the constant violence in the Mideast, and the challenges to the governments now in place.  The fact remains that we don't know much about the opposition, the rebels, and we can wind up in worse shape than we are now, especially as our role in Libya has made us look like a paper tiger, although it is recycled paper.

The Syrian violence is increasing.  And there was further violence in Yemen today.  And Egyptian demonstrators also appeared in Cairo, demanding that the promise of their revolution be kept.

I'd love to know how some of those "Mideast studies" professors in our universities, who've been telling us all these years that we and the Israelis were to blame for all the suffering in the world, are handling the situation.  I'll bet they're not changing a word in a single lecture.

April 8, 2011