On 14 July 2008, President Bashar Assad was at the side of his new western friend, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, reviewing French forces on the occasion of Bastille Day, at the Champs Elysees. Today, the Syrian leader is sending Baath Party members, on the eve of Bastille Day, to attack the embassy of his former French friend. This is because France's ambassador, Eric Chevalier, who was one of the fiercest defenders of the current Syrian regime, visited the city of Hama, which saw mass popular demonstrations against the regime. The Syrian regime, which has been encouraged by every French president since the Mitterrand era to reform and change, has never heeded this advice. Today, the policies of the past, such as storming and attacking embassies, are no longer acceptable. The attack on the American embassy in Damascus in 1998 had very bad consequences for Syrian-American relations at the time. However, things improved a bit because the US was convinced that Syria was important in terms of the stalled Middle East peace track. But things have now changed, and the methods that the Syrian regime previously used are a thing of the past. Arab peoples have changed, and western democracies have learned the lessons of supporting repressive regimes, which have fallen because the wall of fear for Arab peoples has fallen. Young people in Egypt, Tunisia and Yemen have risen up against oppression and corruption, for the sake of values that were celebrated by Assad when he and his former friend Sarkozy were busy celebrating the values cemented by the French Revolution – liberty, fraternity and equality, and these are values with which the Syrian regime has no connection. Today, the French president, who offered Assad a real opportunity to exit his isolation, despite all of the advice to Sarkozy against such a move, no longer has any hope about the Syrian regime undertaking any true reform. The brave Syrian people is rising up; it is not waiting for the American ambassador, or the French ambassador. It is hungry for a better life, and the freedom of everyone to aspire to such a thing. The Syrian people does not fear repression and it has come out in the cities to demand a minimum level of human rights, freedom and a dignified life. The attack on the foreign embassies will not change the legitimate demands of the people. Claiming that everything is a conspiracy is an excuse that has grown old, and it will not prevent people from demonstrating to demand change. When Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said that the regime was unable to carry out reforms, it was the result of long experience with a regime for which the West has made huge efforts to help out of its isolation. But the regime has not listened, and it continues to repeat that everything is a conspiracy. This is how former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq al-Hariri became a martyr, on the pretext that he was preparing a conspiracy. Then, a coup was launched against the government of Prime Minister Saad Hariri, because it was, in the view of Damascus, preparing a conspiracy. What conspiracy? No one knows. The Syrian regime has lost its friends in Turkey and the Arab world, and particularly Qatar, which has done much to help President Assad. All of these countries have tried, to no avail, to convince the Syrian regime that it should put itself on the right path in terms of its regional and Lebanon policies. But nothing has changed; instead, things have gotten worse, with the regime now facing dangerous internal conditions. Enough of these useless policies, which amount to floundering by a regime that relies on oppression and killing to survive. It is not useful to survive in the manner of the Qaddafi regime, which kills its own people in order to remain in a fragile state of power.
