The Bashar al-Assad I Know -- David Lesch, CNN
High expectations are both a blessing and a curse. They are the former in that usually something worthwhile about someone has raised the expectations in the first place. They are the latter when someone fails to meet those expectations. Heightened, maybe even unwarranted, expectations were a serious problem for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from the very beginning of his rise to power in 2000 following the death of his father, Hafiz al-Assad.
As I noted in Middle East Policy Council a couple of years back, I half jokingly told Bashar the first time we met in 2004 that I thought he had made a mistake in letting the media know that he enjoyed Phil Collins’ music. This anecdote fed into an emerging narrative of the relatively unknown al-Assad that he was a pro-West modernizer who was very different from his father. Indeed, Bashar was also the chairman of the Syrian Computer Society and was actually a bit of a geek himself.
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My Comment: Power and all of it's attractions have changed Bashar Assad .... and unfortunately for Syria .... they are now paying the price.
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