In this essay Paul returns to the topic of the Middle east. We present this essay reprinted by permission of Paul and from The Bayview Review. See the links at the end for direct access to the rest of Paul’s work.

Who can doubt that the entire Middle East is getting closer every day to the brink of chaos?

The Syrian Arab Republic. .

Inevitably, some parts of the Middle East are closer to that day than others. But to get some sense of how rapidly things move from apathy to chaos in that region, we recall that when, back in December 2010, the presenters on global television news-shows discovered  the arrival of the Arab Spring,  all the experts to whom they turned agreed that the most secure regime in the region was that of the Bashir al-Assad in Syria. American governments going back at least to Nixon and including the current Obama government had publicly declared their confidence that the Assad regime was making a deliberate and cautious transition to democracy – very soon. Even as the first signs of “Spring” were appearing in Damascus, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in a statement of March 27, 2011, expressed agreement with “many of the members of Congress of both parties who have gone to Syria in recent months [and] have said they believe he[Bashir al-Assad] is a reformer.” (“The Impending Implosion of Syria,” August 12, 2012.)