Thoughts on Syria (and on a Slander)

Some notes about the astonishing turn of events in Syria:

• Russia is a big loser in this story.  Vladimir Putin invested a great deal in supporting Bashar al-Assad’s regime.  For one thing, he was interested (as Soviet leaders and czars have been since Peter the Great) in acquiring a warm-water naval port.  Latakia, on the Mediterranean, was an important step in that direction.  The Assad family apparently fled to Russia via the Russian base there.  Not exactly what Putin had in mind for the place.  Now, all he has to show for his investment is the expense of housing, caring for,  and feeding a useless exiled dictator.
• Iran is also a big loser.  The Iranians have been hemorrhaging Hezbollah leaders in Lebanon.  Now they’ve lost a principal regional ally.
• The kunya of the leader of the anti-Assad forces, Abu Mohammed al-Jawlani (or Jolani), seems to suggest a connection with the “Golan Heights,” an area occupied by Israel since Israeli forces seized it during the 1967 “Six-Day War.”  I’m wondering exactly what that connection might be.
• Fearing instability in the Golan Heights area, Israel has occupied the little strip of no-man’s land just below Mount Bental as a buffer zone.  I don’t blame them.  For years, I’ve taken my tour groups up onto Mount Bental for a brief lecture on the history and politics of that particular place as we’ve looked out toward Damascus over the abandoned Syrian city of Quneitra.
• Abu Mohammed al-Jawlani is 42 years old and looks very much like a younger Fidel Castro.
• He broke with the Islamic State in 2012 and cut ties with al Qaeda in 2016; since then, he has actually fought against both organizations.
• U.S. officials have designated his Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (Organization for the Liberation of Syria [or “of the Levant”]) a terrorist group.  He has turned them into a disciplined fighting force, though, with an ideology that appears to blend Sunni Islamism with nationalism.  We’ll have to wait to see how that blend works out.
• After his forces took Aleppo, he issued edicts to them ordering the protection of Christians and Shi‘ites and telling his men not to take retribution. “In the future Syria,” he said, “we believe that diversity is our strength, not a weakness.”  Those words are very encouraging, although, again, we’ll have to wait in order to see whether they match his long-term actions.
• It’s possible  that his break with the cruelty and intolerance of ISIS and al-Qaeda toward religious minorities is genuine.  I certainly hope so.  It’s also obviously possible that his appeals to moderation are designed to lull the West and other Syrians into complacent acceptance of his rise to power.

I might offer a few thoughts in the next day or two about Bashar al-Assad, based upon a brief conversation that I had, years ago, with a Syrian who knew him well.  I still puzzle about what the man told me.

On Saturday, we dropped by The Creamery, just off of I-15 in Beaver, Utah, for lunch.  It’s a very nice addition to the drive between Salt Lake City or Utah Valley in the north and, in the south, Cedar City or St. George.  We’re suckers for cheese and good milk products.  (We also make it a point to stop by Heber Valley Artisan Cheese when we’re in the area.  And then there’s Tillamook.)

On Sunday, we passed through Las Vegas, where, according to Ken Ritter and Hannah Schoenbaum of the Associated Press, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints intends to build a temple that will be larger than the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris.  Heck, perhaps it will be bigger than St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome or the sacred Cambodian complex of Angkor Wat.  Perhaps it will be roughly the same size as an imperial Death Star.

There is simply no way that I can get through any kind of a list of my favorite Christmas music without thinking of at least one piece from Handel’s Messiah.  The danger, in fact, is that I might list nothing but excerpts from that greatest of oratorios.  However, I’ll content myself for today with “And the Glory of the Lord,” performed by the Tabernacle Choir.  To which I append a recommendation for the BYU-produced film depicted in the image above.

“Me semes it were no wisdom to creadit every light tale blazed by the blasphemous mowthes of rude commonalty, for we dayly here how with there blasphemous trompe they spred abrode innumerable lyes without ether shame or honestye (which prima facie) sheweth forth a vysage of truthe, as thowghe it weare a perfet veritie, & matter in deede.  Where in there is notheng more untrue, and amonge the wyse sorte so it is esteemed, with whome these bablinges be of small force & effect.”

(From George Cavendish, Thomas Wolsey Late Cardinale, His Lyffe and Deathe, in Edmund Creeth, ed., Tudor Prose 1513-1570 [Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, Doubleday, 1969], 277.  [I inherited this volume from my late friend Davis Bitton.])

Sigh.  If the Peterson Obsession Board weren’t continuously posting falsehoods about me, I would almost certainly ignore it completely.  (To me, it offers little of substantive interest.)  Even as things stand, I’ve ignored the majority of its allegations over the roughly two decades that I’ve been the almost daily (!) target  of its slanders.  But, in my judgment, some slanders simply cannot be allowed to go publicly uncontradicted.  Yesterday, for example, a frequent commenter there who goes by a pseudonym very similar to “Everybody’s WC” declared that I tried, several years ago, to destroy the career and the family of his best friend, who was teaching at BYU at the time.

I deny it.  I have never sought to destroy anybody’s family or career.  It’s not remotely in my nature or character to do so, and I haven’t the faintest idea what he’s talking about.  Who was this person?  I can’t think of anybody.  Perhaps it’s a misunderstanding.  However, given EWC’s long history of posting malicious tall tales about me and pending specific further information, I’m strongly inclined to regard this new story as simply yet another of his manufactured lies.

It’s easy to invent false allegations against others, especially if one (a) is anonymous and (b) has no scruples.  Among the aspects of contemporary social media that most distress me is the public platform that they provide to unethical people for character assassination.

Posted from San Diego, California