Let the Syrian People Choose

Free Choice Illusion
Now that Russia has entered into the bombing of Syria directly without relying on their bastard client government to do their crimes, maybe Usrael will also stop relying on their bastard rebel forces and directly take on Russia. 

The situation is full of deception. It has almost nothing to do with what could benefit the people of the Middle East. Russia is loaded with hypocrisy and so is the US.
In Russia they recently opened a new grand mosque in Moscow and in the opening ceremony warned of the threat of nationalism, hinting at the Chechen bid for independence. Yet Russia is fiercely claiming its right to defend its own national interests. The US and Russia support dictators wherever they spend their people’s money buying from the US and Russia repectively – mostly buying arms to impose their tyrannies.
The Syrian government is given a choice of buy American weapons to oppress and kill yourselves with or buy US weapons to do it. When the US is pointing a gun at the Syrian regime it feels it has no choice but to get a Russian gun to point back.

But this choice is and has always been a false one. The cow in the picture does not have to go forward. The Syrian government can turn around. U-turns in politics are always difficult because leaders are supposed to know where they are going and others are supposed to follow without understanding why. If the leader changes their mind their followers could easily loose trust that they know what they are doing. That is why leaders have to be replaced regularly to keep trust in the overall leadership class. A new face is all that is needed. The old face can be cast aside and blamed and the followers will follow the new leader happily until they lose trust in them because they inevitably sometimes will lead the community in a bad direction. Admitting mistakes is political suicide at least for the individuals involved.

The Syrian government under its current president for life, son of its previous president for life needs to realise this basic dynamic of politics to avoid the kind of bad political decisions that have led it to this slaughterhouse. About 10 years seems to be the maximum shelf life of any leader. After that another face is needed, who is free to distance themselves from the mistakes of the previous leader.

For Syria to escape its death spiral its leadership need to make a u-turn. It does not need to become a US puppet or a Russian one. A new leader is needed and the current government should announce its future resignation in favour of a new leader not based on the government’s approval of that person but to be led by someone genuinely picked by the people.

It does not have to be a national election based on everyone voting. It could just be done by setting up a jury like panel randomly selected from the people charged with representing the people to make the choice. Make a media show of it and have there be at most tens of people in the jury. Give it a month to take nominations and listen to debates and have votes until they pick a new leader.

There are many ways of picking leaders without the need to have it decided by who can buy the best guns to impose their leadership by force on others. The people’s decisions instead should be based only on open discussion among them. This is the meaning of the Qur’anic prescription for leadership by shurah and forms the foundation of Islamic political legitimacy.