A couple of weeks ago I wrote in this here mag about Syria. I played it safe. My point was that Assad was not as bad as what may come after him. I now know better. In the long sweep of history, those who play it safe are more often than not wrong. Here’s a tip: If you want to get it right, choose the side Uncle Sam and the Fourth Estate see as a villain, and presto, you”€™ve chosen the good guy.

Assad did not start this in Syria. Saudi Arabia and Israel did. There was no Arab Spring in Syria, only realpolitik. Very briefly: The camel drivers posing as Saudi royals got the heebie-jeebies after Uncle Sam invaded Iraq, enabling the Shiites to come to power after the Sunni majority had kicked them around since the 1920s. Iraq’s Shiites and neighboring Iranian Shiites were natural allies. The Saudis began paying al-Qaeda to foment revolution in Syria, the main country standing between Israel and the Shiite regional powers of Iran and Iraq. That is when I believe the camel drivers got a telephone call from Israel: Let’s keep this quiet, but between you and your money, and us with our power over the Americans, we can knock Assad over in no time.

The pathetic media, desperate for a bad guy to demonize, blind to reality but open to PR hucksters, played along. Like lemmings, journalists and newspapers have parroted the script that dictated this was a revolution by Syrian people yearning for freedom. The truth, however, is that the Syrian conflict is a Sunni move against what the Saudis and Israelis view as a Shiite move toward Middle Eastern hegemony.

What surprises and depresses me is that after a century of never getting it right”€”both World Wars were useless to America, as were the disasters of Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan”€”Uncle Sam is still a naïve and helpless giant being manipulated by Saudi money and Israeli threats. So-called Syrian protesters are Sunni mercenaries and al-Qaeda professionals working for Saudi money”€”the same Saudi money that paid for 9/11 and killed thousands of Americans.