We shall believe that the Syrian regime is secular, and that its moral values are based on a blend of innate Arab behavior and the influence of the religions in which Arabs believed – especially Islam – on the sayings of the first Baathists. Let us assume that the statement of one of the founders of the Baath Party, Zaki Arsuzi, about mercifulness being the exceptional characteristic of the Arabs, is still present at the heart of the ideology of the Arab Socialist Baath Party command, and that this command also believes in the calls for modernity introduced by Michel Aflaq following his studies abroad. Let us say that all these values define the ethics of the Syrian leadership in its current conflict with its “obscurantist and Takfiri" oppositionists who are dealing with America, the West and Israel to topple the resistance and rejectionism option and open the region towards further Zionist-Western hegemony. Moreover, let us say that the breaches, massacres and violation of the Syrian people's rights and dignity among others, were mere pragmatic incidents to achieve higher goals and defend Syria. This ought to justify the support offered to Bashar al-Assad by secularists, leftists and pan-Arabs, at a time when the reforms are proceeding in an irrevocable way, as it was stated by the eloquent Syrian information minister. The problem does not reside in the number of civilians being killed at a rate exceeding 150 victims per day in average, but rather in the obstinacy of the terrorists in the face of reforms and modernization, which is forcing the Syrian Arab army to handle this inflexibility by all means necessary. This talk is completely opposed to reality, while the forfeiture of a familial judgment provoked a sectarian conflict on secularism, modernity and reform, is only believed by those who want to believe it. Hence, there is no meaning for the positions of the leftists and their likes in the countless parties, except for their rejection of any change which they believe will not maintain the crumbs being thrown to them by tyrannical and authoritarian regimes, and will not hide their concealed sectarian tendencies. But the biggest problem resides in those who imported the values of modernity, after having run them through the Stalinist ‘filter' which – based on the idea of drastic revolutionary change – stripped modernity of any moral consideration and attributed all the previous moral values of the revolution to the bourgeoisie, religion and backwardness. Indeed, morals only belong to the upper class assigned to dominate society, and in the event of a drastic revolutionary change – and only in that case – do the previous values collapse to allow the rise of those of alternative society. This is what was written in the books. At this level, it might not be a coincidence that the leftists supporting the Arab revolutions, especially that of the Syrian people, are the ones who reassessed their ideologies and hypothetical principles, and harshly criticized the Soviet experience and its outcome. The latter thus distanced themselves from the saying “the end justifies the means," and refused to consider the slaughtering of the people, the sacrificing of their interests and their daily suffering as being an acceptable price for the continuation of false claims about cosmic conspiracies and geostrategic balances, for which the lives of tens of thousands of people can be offered. At that point, the Arab left became irrevocably divided between the supporters of the Regime – all the regimes and whichever one – and those defending society, with all its facets and meanings. In that sense, the Syrian revolution – more than all the others combined – restored consideration to the smallest social unit, i.e. humans, knowing that no regime can be sustained and no interests can be secured if their natural rights, dignity and freedom are being violated. The Syrian people asked the most difficult questions, not only to their nihilistic and defeated regime – even before that officer removed the fingernails of the children in Daraa – but also to society, culture and politics in the Arab world: To be or not to be human?
