Deficiencies of a Ba’athist State

Farid Ghadry
Farid Ghadry Blog
23 December 09

Within the Syrian opposition, there is gayety in the air. It has nothing to do with the usual ingredients one witnesses in the normal course of our business such as international support or strong unity between the different groups but rather it have to do with Assad himself and the Ba’athist propaganda in general.

Confidence is like a shot in the arm of a sick patient but over confidence is like an overdose of narcotics. That’s exactly what the Syrian dissident community discerns today: An aplomb Assad stepping on landmines oblivious to the danger because of an overdose of self-induced confidence.

From observable and consistent signals that we, in the opposition, perceive either through planted regime operatives or through hired pens writing in Blogs, we can detect nuances with a long tale to tell. Not too dissimilar from a detective expert in reading body language to discern the truth from the lies.

In the Ba’athist ideology in general, much goes wrong and very little is successful when it comes to governance. Ba’athism is 90% propaganda and 10% truth. Up until the 80’s, to many Syrians the ‘67 war with Israel was won by Syria. The regime is continuously forced to respond with lies, half-truths, and total fabrications (i.e. Amb. Imad Mustapha) just so it enamors itself into believing of its right cause and more so to confuse the public-at-large into believing that the Ba’athist ideology is a successful socio-economic experiment.

In almost scientific fashion, as one compares the Syrian propaganda with the reality or the misinformation planted by western journalists — whose task is to shore-up the useful idiots in the Middle East — one can quickly read between the lines of every issued press release, interview, and newspaper articles. Sometimes, we get it wrong when the government actually tells a truth, which is very rare considering how easy it is for the problems to pile upon a society with little resources and whose aim is to control the population very much the epicenter of what renders a country successful.

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