News item: The president of Syria, His Excellency Bashar al-Assad, delivered an address to parliament in Damascus over the weekend in which he compared his crackdown on protesters to a doctor performing surgery.
You are welcome, my grateful and ever-fearful subjects. No need to thank me personally. No need to kiss my hand in gratitude. You couldn’t get past my security anyway. So just stay where you are. And don’t make any sudden moves.
As I was saying last Sunday, when a doctor performs surgery and cuts and saws and amputates, you don’t accuse him of having blood on his hands, you thank him for saving the patient. So I accept your thanks. Which I am sure are coming at any moment. Or were lost in the mail. It’s so hard to find good help these days. Food tasters, too. How’s about I just assume your gratitude and go from there?
This unfortunate revolt you may have heard about is, of course, the work of foreigners. Which is why up to 13,000 Syrians have had to be killed in the crackdown. What is that the Americans said in Vietnam? Sometimes you have to destroy a village to save it? Well, sometimes you have to kill a nation to save it.
Think of me as the doctor who has to cut out the problem. Or problems. Thousands of them. Maybe tens of thousands before this doctor is through with you. Once I get started on something, it’s hard to stop. I’m no quitter. And, really, it gets to be fun after a while. A snip here and an amputation there, a lobotomy to top it all off, and the patient will be right as rain in a few days. Who needs a heart anyway? I do fine without one.