Did the Observer defend the Baathist government of Saddam Hussein, before the invasion of Iraq, on the grounds that secular nationalist dictatorship would be better for gay men in Iraq than any of the three likely alternatives to it that could result from the invasion: a puppet government beholden to Washington or a radical anti-Washington Islamist government or, worst of all, decades of chaos and anarchy? If it didn't, can it learn a lesson from the present as history and make sure that it will defend the Syrian government precisely on those grounds*?
* The authoritarian regime was not without its critics, though most were quickly dealt with. A serious challenge arose in the late 1970s, however, from fundamentalist Sunni Muslims called the Muslim Brotherhood (seen as a forerunner to Al-Qaeda), who reject the basic values of the secular Ba'ath program and object to rule by the Alawis, whom they consider heretical. From 1976 until its suppression in 1982, the Muslim Brotherhood led an armed insurgency against the regime. In response to an attempted uprising by the brotherhood in February 1982, the government crushed the fundamentalist opposition centered in the city of Hama, leveling parts of the city with artillery fire and causing many thousands of dead and wounded. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syria>
-- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>