This is yet another day of the Syrian crisis. All the preambles say that the country is drowning in “security solutions” and that the abundance of oppression will not make up for political scarcity. These same preambles allow us to learn that the regime will not come out unscathed from this crisis. Indeed, the mounting international isolation, the Western threats to increase the sanctions in response to the intensive killings and arrests, the harsh Turkish warnings addressed by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the Palestinian reconciliation, are all elements revealing the retreat of the value of the strategic position and regional balances on which the rule always relied to remain in power, in the eyes of those who used to stress the importance of the position and the balances. In this context, the rise of the voices of “Syria's supporters” in Lebanon, through campaigns of insults and accusations that exceeded all limits, is the other facet of the political and media failure on the Syrian domestic arena, and a retaliation against the international exclusion prompted by the mobilization of the apparatuses and armed men of the security regime against the opposition. It would be useless to say at this level that the political retreat and the weak media performance cannot be compensated for by the obscenities of some Lebanese politicians and journalists. Still, this remains at the level of the skin. If we were to dig a little deeper, we would detect vacuum. This vacuum is conveyed by the emergence of “military sources” and vague “concerned authorities” to replace the speakers and advisors who – at some point – believed that their eloquence was the reform demanded by the Syrians but soon discovered that their televised appearances – just like the dispatch of tanks to invade Daraa, Baniyas and Homs among other locations – did not stop the popular opposition. However, the rule has not yet lost all its domestic cards. It has not lost all its supporters or its sticks and carrots. Until now, it has not yet relinquished its foreign cards. But this is not enough to operate the “machine” of the Syrian state. The rule has rejected the calls for a national dialogue, and was unable to envision its citizens as being something other than masses awaiting the donations it consents to give them. The two latter positions have nothing to do with politics the way they are exercised in the twenty-first century. Consequently, a major collapse occurred and widened the already wide gap between the people and the regime. The rule has reached its end for wide factions among the people, especially the youth, the poor, the unemployed, and the populations living in middle-sized and small cities and the countryside in general. Some are even saying that the authority is now surviving on a credit that is diminishing instead of increasing. As for the social factions that are still supporting the regime, they are nearing the moment of truth: either join the future or stay in the past, as the present is temporary and unviable. Therefore, the Syrians and we, as Lebanese and Arabs, must think about the next stage. China will not fall apart in case the regime in Syria were to change - as it was predicted by a pro-Damascus Lebanese politician in a televised interview - and the sun will not be blocked as the Abbasid Caliphs cautioned whoever even considered staging a coup against them. A regime will go and another will come in its place. That is all there is to it. But at what price? Civil war is a possible threat, just like escalation in Lebanon or its South, whether by the regime itself or through sides that will try to exploit the transitory stage to enhance their positions. As for the attempt to undermine the opposition by raiding villages, terrorizing and humiliating the population and concealing one's head in quicksand, it is a mere attempt to gain time which has already expired long ago.
