Handling Syria and the Bible Blog

The web is clogged with people who know nothing about Syria offering advice about how best to appease the Assad regime. How many of the liberals against US confrontation with Syria know what Robert Kaplan knows (in the Wall St Journal):

"Syria is but a Levantine version of the former-Yugoslavia -- without the intellectual class which that other post-Ottoman state could claim at the time of its break-up (since Hafez al-Assad's rule was so much more stultifying than Tito's). In Syria, as in the former Yugoslavia, each sect and religion has a specific geography. Aleppo in the north is a bazaar city with greater historical links to Mosul and Baghdad than to Damascus."

While the blogs are full of out-of-date commentary about what needs to be done regarding Syria, it turns out that the most up-to-date comments on how to handle the Syrians come from the oldest blog around.

It comes from the first Book of Kings in the Bible, Chapter 20.

At the time there was a head of state in Israel who took office some time after his earlier mentor was assassinated. He initiated a policy of appeasement regarding the brutal dictator in Syria. The Syrian dictator was dominating the neighbors of Syria, stealing their property, controlling their lives. The Syrian dictator refused to be satisfied with the terms of the appeasement. He demanded more and more.

In Ecclesiastes it says there is nothing new under the sun. Trying to appease Syrian dictators is not a new innovation. Remember old King Ahab, the one and the same, the husband of Jezebel? He offered the Syrian dictator, named Ben-Hadad, everything imaginable. For peace. He sent tribute to Ben-Hadad. He stripped his capital of gold and silver. He even sent his wives and children to the Syrian.

But, as in all forms of appeasement, the goodwill gestures for peace merely emboldened the dictator. They were interpreted as a sign of Israelite weakness. The Syrian military dictator Ben-Hadad demanded MORE, demanded direct access and sovereignty within the capital of Israel itself. He must be allowed to roam the capital freely, searching the homes and taking what he wanted. Like Assad's people in Beirut today.

When the barbarians demanded parts of his Capital, King Ahab was at last pushed over the edge. Never mind the massive hordes and sheer numbers of his enemy. Never mind his own track record of suppressing monotheism and promoting PC paganism. Ahab abandoned appeasement overnight, with the approval of the Prophets and the Bible. He discovered that there really IS a military solution to terrorism and Syrian aggression after all, and he devastated the forces of his opponent.

Ben-Hadad’s Syria was annihilated. Even Ahab's arch-nemesis, Elijah, begrudgingly congratulates the King on his shift to sane national defense policies. Ahab whips the enemy twice, once on the mountains and once on the plains. The Middle East is saved, although not from Ahab’s bad government.

Even a villain such as Ahab could display fleeting good sense and courage and atone for his having pursued appeasement for so long. Perhaps there is hope for the liberuhs after all.