By Iqbal Jassat
 
As Syria disintegrates and important landmarks in cities across many of its region displaying visible scars of war, it’s becoming clear that the Assad regime’s reign is terminal.
 
While this outcome is predictable, the images circulating via Syrian state broadcast suggest that Bashar al Assad is firmly in control and on the verge of restoring law and order.
 
"Law and order"? It’s a strange phenomenon indeed!

Western imperialism and American designs in particular, especially in a post-cold war theatre, had placed a huge premium on retaining dictators in the Arab world to deny democracy to Muslims for a variety of strange reasons.
 
One such has been the ridiculous argument that open societies in the Arab/Muslim world would equate to lawlessness and anarchy.
 
Thus the preference for dictatorships who would keep their populations on a tight leash to impose "law and order".
 
Until he was forced to vacate his American-funded tyranny by a popular revolt, Hosni Mubarak represented the archetypal benevolent dictator who ensured "law and order" facilitated rape of Egypt’s honour and dignity.
 
It was similarly in line with the plunder of Tunisia by its deposed leader that so-called "law and order" shielded Europe’s complicity in Ben Ali’s corrupt rule!
 
Following Hafez al Assad’s death, the ascendancy of his British educated son Bashar was heralded in the West as a continuation of his father’s "moderate" policies.

Of course it goes without saying that his repression of fundamental human rights targeting the Islamic Movement enjoyed unflinching support of Western states.
 
The same holds true today in countries such as Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Yemen and the Gulf Sheikdoms: "law and order" imposed at the barrel of American-funded guns!
 
Syria today, like Iraq under the former Saddam Hussein regime, has fallen out of favour with Western interest, despite decades of investment in the cultivation of policies sympathetic to the zionist colonial-settler state known as Israel!
 
Not surprising therefore that chaos, anarchy, death and destruction in Syria today, is a preferred option actively pursued by the United States through a motley of diverse rebel formations as an expedient measure to achieve regime change.

Will it pave the way for a more "moderate" West-leaning client-state able to trade-off the Occupied Golan Heights for "peace" with apartheid Israel is left to be seen.
 
What is certain though is that the US and her allies will unhesitatingly cut a deal with Assad if he fore goes ties with Iran and Hezbollah and by permitting American-Zionist lawmakers to re-write Syria’s political script.
 
That’s the choice: "law and order" as an explicit alternate to the current mayhem!
 
Who cares then if freedom is mortgaged once again to Uncle Sam!
 
– Iqbal Jassat is an Executive Member of the Media Review Network, Johannesburg – South Africa. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.