gates again today condemned the slaughter in syria in clear terms. then he came up again with the official formulation: 'whether the syrian regime has the necessary legitimacy to continue to govern is a question.' the un position is the same. without proposing an intervention (though i'll say again, anyone with a clear shot should take it), i just want to say that this stance is incomprehensible. again i'll ask: what considerations are actually in play? what in the world would it take for all these people to just to say clearly: the assad regime is murdering its own people by the hundreds, and we want it gone?
now admittedly i wouldn't formulate the thing in terms of legitimacy, because i hold that there are no legitimate governments. and one way to take these remarks is as a pretty good confirmation of that, or demonstration of it: to say that the actions of the syrian regime have engaged in puts its legitimacy in question pre-supposes that the assad regime had legitimacy before - possibly based on bashar's father's stabilizing slaughter in hama - and that engaging in massive murder and torture of peaceful dissidents doesn't necessarily compromise a regime's legitimacy. in other words, the threshold of legitimacy applied by bodies such as the un and the government of the united states is...minimalist. but however one formulates the problem, the situation is intolerable.
