The Daily Star Editorial

The first reaction one might have to Syrian President Bashar Assad’s television appearance Tuesday is that the embattled leader spoke directly to his supporters, due to the defiance and hard-line stances delivered.
By claiming that the Arab League was completely compromised, and the tool of foreign powers, Assad signaled to his supporters that the League’s actions were not to be taken seriously, and singlehandedly undermined the very agreement he endorsed just weeks ago.

But this was not a closed-door session; Assad was speaking live on television, and directed a multi-faceted declaration of war. He continued to exhibit the bizarre state of denial about what was happening in his country, as we have seen from the remarks of other heads of state during the “Arab Spring.”

He was certainly speaking to his supporters, to tell them that, in essence, nothing has changed in terms of his regime’s stance since March of last year. Assad reiterated that Syria was the victim of an elaborate foreign conspiracy, and yet declined to reveal the names of the countries that are supposedly involved.
He went on at length at reforms, using the kind of slippery language to evade any kind of accountability for why these reforms have yet to produce any important results.

Assad repeated the refrain that no sanctioned shooting at protesters is taking place, despite all of the evidence to the contrary, and went on and on about the “armed gangs” that are supposedly behind the problems. He implied that soldiers and others are only opening fire in self-defense, a line of argument that will hopefully be proven wrong when the Arab League monitors deliver their final report.

Assad talked about the “pockets” of unrest in Syria, or “pockets of ignorance,” as he called them, while standing in front of a map of his country that highlighted the names of major cities, most of which have experienced horrific violence since early last year.

The Syrian president was also confident enough to thumb his nose at the West and talk about the need to look East, perhaps buoyed by the fact that Russia and China continue to indulge his government’s brutal and methodical crackdown.

Assad even casually mentioned that half of his country’s schools are not operating as expected, due to the unrest, but declined to go into any details about who exactly is responsible for this sad state of affairs, or about what he intended to do to rectify the situation.

As usual, he talked past the opposition by offering the usual rhetoric – only Assad and his close circle are apparently competent to decide who qualifies to participate in “dialogue,” such as it is.
In short, it was a competent, well-delivered speech, if the goal was to avoid talking to the one group whose existence Assad continues to refuse to recognize: the Syrian people.