It has been exactly two years since Geneva II, the United Nations-backed international peace conference on the future of Syria.
At the time UN peace envoy to Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, believed that a peaceful end to the conflict could be brokered by bringing together the Assad regime and the Syrian opposition to discuss what he thought would be clear steps towards a transitional government for Syria with full executive powers.
The transition process was supposed to be implemented according to the protocol that had resulted from the Geneva I conference initiated by UN peace envoy to Syria Kofi Annan in June of 2012.
During the “talks” US Secretary of State John Kerry insisted that Assad must be willing to hand over power to a transitional government. "There is no way, no way possible, that a man who has led a brutal response to his own people can regain legitimacy to govern,” he said.
But the Obama administration had already compromised its own legitimacy by giving Assad what amounted to a slap on the wrist for the chemical weapons attack on Ghouta in 2013 that resulted in the deaths of 1400 men, women and children who had lethal sarin gas dropped on them as they slept.
The Assad Foreign Minister Walid Muallem displayed the regime’s growing arrogance by saying, “No-one in the world has the right to confer or withdraw the legitimacy of a president, a constitution or a law, except for the Syrians themselves” which is exactly what millions of Syrians had already done.
During Geneva II the Assad regime continued to display its arrogance by dropping illegal barrel bombs on civilians that resulted in the deaths of at least 1,870 people over the nine days it took for the conference to prove itself to be a dismal failure.
Media coverage of every international attempt to come up with a peaceful solution to Assad’s personal war being waged on the people of Syria, for rejecting the legitimacy of his brutal, corrupt and oppressive stranglehold on the presidency of their own homeland has consistently focused on the reluctance of the Syrian opposition to fully engage in such negotiations.
What the UN and others have failed to realize is that the members of the Syrian opposition have known all along that Assad does not have the capacity to “play nice”. He is a compulsive liar and master of manipulation. And he has surrounded himself with those who play dirty just like he does. Just like all national competitions held in Syria during his father’s brutal dictatorship, he believes it is his right as an Assad to come out on top and be declared the winner regardless of whether he earned it fairly or not.
He exhibits the classic characteristics of an abusive mentality. His arrogance and sense of entitlement color his perception of the world and the way he views the country and its people. When he says only the Syrian people can decide the fate of Syria, he views himself as Syria and the “people’ he refers to are those who support him alone.
In his mind those Syrians who do not support him are truly the “germs” he referred to them as in one of his speeches during the early days of the peaceful uprising that called for government reforms and an end to the impunity that was granted to those who felt it was their right to do anything as long as it did not challenge his authority, including the right to rape, pillage and torture children.
For years the people of Syria kept quiet about the conditions under which they lived, out of fear but often out of embarrassment as well.
Syria, the beautiful land of antiquity and exotic ethnicity kept its humiliating secret that all was not as it appeared to be for 40 years; like a woman who hides the fact that she is being beaten by an abusive husband for years.
Those who understand the workings of an abusive mind know that they are experts at manipulation. Their arrogance and self-righteousness knows no limits. They demonize and belittle their victims and tell them that they are being abused for their own good. They twist reality and in their minds they see themselves as the true victims of the imagined offenses of the targets of their wrath. In extreme cases the abuse leads to murder which the abuser continues to believe is justified.
When an abuser finds himself in a leadership position and manages to remain unchallenged, he becomes a megalomaniac who sees himself as having the power to control the whole world.
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