Mick Hartley

George Morris, at the New Arab, on the tie-wearing enablers of Assad's brutality:

Assad is the sort of man some western elites can do business with, a man who they find hard to believe is a monster because he walks, talks and dresses rather like them….

Assad and his wife have a remarkably similar background to many elite figures in the West. Like Libya's Gaddafi dynasty, the House of Assad has strong connections to the United Kingdom. Bashar was studying ophthalmology in London when his brother Bassel dashed his chances of becoming president by smashing his Mercedes into a roundabout at 80mph.

His wife, Asma, is British-Syrian, went to a private school, studied at King’s College, London and spent time working as a banker before becoming First Lady. The regime has sought to capitalise on Asma and build up an image for her as a sort of Syrian Princess Diana, including through her involvement in charity work. Her philanthropy, alas, does not extend to asking her husband to stop gassing Syria's civilians.

Even the regime's poisonous propagandist, Bouthaina Shaaban, was educated at the University of Warwick, and the language she uses in interviews with western media outlets suggests the extent to which she understands western liberals and how to appeal to their values; Assad means stability, secularism, safety from the massed forces of jihad. For this, Syria must burn, but the ends justify the means.

It is, of course, nonsense. The idea that Assad can be portrayed as a force for stability when he barely governs his disintegrating country, when he relies on foreign militias, jihadists and sectarian fanatics to provide his ground troops and Russia to provide most of his air power, is absurd.

Assad as the last bulwark of civilisation against terrorism is a laughable idea, given it is widely known that the government flooded the country with jihadists to swallow up the revolution, and that his regime appears to have extensive links with IS.

For some people, Assad's actions since 2011 haven't been enough to put them off. The extermination of half a million people aside, Bashar's just like us, right?…

Bashar dresses like them, smart suits and ties, parading presidentially around his tacky palace. Asma al-Assad speaks English with a British accent. Bouthaina Shaaban doesn't sound all that different, sometimes, from some of our own leftist and liberal commentariat.

All three have been educated in the West. All three talk – with however much vacuity – about secularism and multiculturalism. What if, when western elites look at these fascists who wear ties, they struggle to believe that they are the worst people in Syria because, to some extent, they see people like themselves?