Read This, And Try Not To Gag

Truth be told, I don't have much interest in arguing with the American far Left these days. A pundit whose name I now forget once said that liberalism now resembled a dead animal lying on the side of the road. Various people come by and poke it with a stick, looking for a reaction, but it fails to do anything interesting. To be honest, these days I find leftists ranting about American or Lebanese politics to not be so much infuriating, as boring.

So, it is a special day when I came across this tribute from the Syrian government to anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan. Ms. Sheehan, you see, is "retiring" from the anti-war movement; riding off into the blazing sunset, or something to that effect. Here's how Syrian Minister of Expatriate Affairs Dr. Buthayna Sha'ban bids her adieu:

"[Sheehan] states that her aim was to bring about a change in the norms of the American regime, and this is something that [the regime] strictly forbids, since a change of norms would mean a change in the [U.S.] stance on Palestine, Lebanon, Sudan, and Somalia. [A change of norms] could dictate a policy completely different from the present one, and the two American parties cannot afford this, unless they decide they want a foreign policy completely unlike the one currently employed by the U.S., in which the two parties differ only in tone and degree but not in essence...

"I do not know whether Cindy Sheehan will rescind her decision. But I hope she will, because the battle is an important and a crucial one. It is not a battle of the American people against the [American] administration, but a battle of truth against falsehood - of those who believe in justice and human dignity against those who see the world only [in terms of] oil, wealth and hegemony..."

Ah, to be declared a peacemaker by the Syrian regime. Somehow, I don't think that Sheehan will appreciate the irony. More importantly, it is interesting to note that the language the Syrian government uses would be just as appropriate in a tribute written by a supposedly "progressive" magazine in the United States or Europe. It is not a coincidence.