The good people are wrong again, this time about Syria

Once again as so often the nice people and the experts are laughably mistaken. Russia is right to fear what will follow the fall of Assad and and sees herself as defending Middle Eastern Christians. The choice seems a victory for Assad's horrible regime or a long war ending up with a Sunni regime and not many Christians or Druze left. I at one point hoped for the fall of the House of Assad but I learnt from experience. The fall of Mubarak has made things worse, probably ditto Gaddafi. We are seeing the end of the Christian Middle East. 

But the Assad regime will fall, now or at some point. I rejoice that I visited Syria in 2007 before the deluge.

Jonathan Littell's descriptions in the Guardian today of the way in which the army tortures opponents of the government I found unbearable to read. I suspect that the rebels are probably using equally gruesome methods too. I am in no position to judge what is going on but the press accounts from Syria are astonishingly partial in both senses of the word. Once more we hear only one side. This story and this give a glimpse of what is really going on, which the press and the British and French governments  are ignoring. To stoke up a civil war by military intervention at this moment would be insane folly but it seems on the cards. Why should not Iran and Russia intervene if Great Britain and France do?