When “the neighborhood” is the Middle East, you don’t win that title by accident. The Syrian Arab Republic seems to pride itself on it’s boorish behavior towards its geographical neighbors, stirring trouble in Lebanon even after it ended it’s occupation of the region, holding political prisoners and, if the adjacent country of Jordan is to be believed, restricting the flow of water out of it’s borders with dams.
That’s some straight up, comic book-grade villainy. Evil for the sake of evil, and if Reed Richards and his pretty wife Sue can be killed in the ensuing mayhem, all the better. Syria is the Dr. Doom of the region…
Or perhaps they’re the Middle East’s Mr. Burns, who once used an enormous retractable shield to block out the sun.
Now that Saddam’s out of the picture, some else has to play the part of mythical Arab(ish) boogeyman. Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is all apocalyptic bluster, obscuring a fear of Western power. Besides, he’s only second in command: Final say in Persia always goes through the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Syria’s Bashar al-Assad doesn’t look like the new face of e-vil until you take a close look at the picture below.
He’s suggesting that women can’t drive motor vehicles. What a goddamn awful man he is. Between that and Syria’s ridiculous water hording, I think we have our next country to invade and drive to ruination.
