One of the problems with absolute power is that the last thing a dictator is ever told is the absolute truth. In the final days of a regime, this lack of reality can reach epic proportions. Hitler deep in his Berlin bunker with Soviet troops only a few kilometers away was ordering phantom armies to counter attack, while protesting, even then, that the Nazi war machine could still prevail. Bashar Al-Assad and his close circle have been living in their own psychological bunker for much of the last 16 months. A protest over the arrest and mistreatment of graffiti-spraying children led to popular protest. Though typical of past uncompromising repression by the authorities, the gunning down of those demonstrators was this time a crime too far by the regime against its own citizens. The revolt began. But even two or three months into the insurrection, Assad would still have found a hearing, had he chosen to talk to the opposition and begin real negotiations for change. The Arab League was from the beginning ready to facilitate talks. But encased in his bunker and hearing only comforting, optimistic words, Assad pressed on with the crackdown on protest, convinced that brute force alone would crush the rebels, whom he called terrorists. Yet the harder the regime has tried to smash the opposition, the stronger it has become. What did Assad's deputy defense minister and brother-in-law, General Asef Shawkat and the defense minister General Dawoud Rajhah and his predecessor Hassan Turkmani tell the dictator about the chances of his regime surviving? Did they assure him sycophantically that defeat was impossible and that it required only resolution and determination to defeat his enemies, even as they closed in on Damascus? If they had indeed only told the president what they thought he wanted to hear, then they will mislead him no more. All perished in Wednesday's bomb blast at the regime's security headquarters. The question now is how is Assad taking the loss of three members of his inner circle? He was remarkably quick to appoint a new defense minister, as if seeking to prove that government business carried on as usual. Nevertheless, he must be feeling profound shock at the assassinations? Had any of these men died in an ambush out in the streets, it would not have been a great surprise. However, they died together in a meeting room deep inside the National Security Headquarters, arguably the most secure compound after the presidential palace itself. Surely this must have come as a hammer blow to Assad. But has it been heavy enough to crack the shell of unreality in which the Syrian dictator has isolated himself? Has he picked up the phone and asked his friend President Vladimir Putin to get him and his family out of Syria? Or has he retreated deeper into his bunker, cutting himself off even more from all but a select group of trusted aides, who can be relied on to tell him only the good news that he wants to hear, and thus prolonging Syria's agony?
