I don't mean to suggest that WMD will migrate with exiles if the Syrian Revolution was to fail, but merely point out that these are facts of life in that life and death struggle, especially in Homs,. Syria.

Thermidor of course refers to the month when an anti-Jacobin coup brought an end to the Spring of the French Revolution.

As to such things be an inexorable part of human affairs, ponder Wordsworth's early words on the French Revolution:

OH! pleasant exercise of hope and joy! For mighty were the auxiliars which then stood Upon our side, we who were strong in love! Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven!-

Of course, it didn't turn out so simple after all, and one year into the Arab Spring of our day, its fairly clear that many in conservative circles in China, Russia, and even here are having grave misgivings over the outcome of the Arab Spring, making Syria a not unlikely or surprising candidate for a Thermidor, if I think that would be short-sighted.

Personally, I think it would be best if Bashar al Assad stepped down, even from his point of view, and think the question of what to do with the Syrian resistance drives that home: Where will they go, as exiles to where?

As to the the title of the post, what Power is going to want to take in all the exiles if Assad's forces prevail in a fight to the finish?

Moreover, can we look ourselves in the face with a clean conscience if we just allow Assad to massacre the residents of Homs, like his father did in Hama in 1982?

Moreover, what Power is going to want to have a fight to the finish over Syrian WMD, or, have Assad, who tried to surrpetitiously build a nuclear reactor until it was quietly bombed, be emboldened with WMD?

Any takers?

As to Assad, it's hard for me to see how he can think maintaining power personally is going to make him anything but a Mubarak or Gaddafi in the long-run, although there are of course other considerations in play as to the title of the post, which if one knows what one is looking at, also can see being leaked in the mainstream media as to the ever present debate between "Realists" and "Liberals" in American foreign policy.

When you see concerns about "Al Qaida" being present in Syria, that is a sort of code word for "Islamists" and "Mess" in general these days within the American power elite, as to security concerns that might not go well in Syria should al Assad fall, and that's fair enough, if only so far as it goes in light of the practical questions of Syrian Exiles and WMD.

The term Liberal in this context doesn't mean what it usually does in American public debate, but refers to a much more general notion of International Relations as to its fundamental character in terms of universal norms of human rights and democracy being the only stable foundation of international relations.

Call Liberals "Optimists" as to the possibilities available in international politics.

"Realists," on the other hand, having cleverly appropriated a word to define opponents of their approach "Unrealistic," focus on international relations as being driven by traditional state concerns over military security and power: Call Realists "Pessimists."

Therefore, Paul Wolfowitz and many neocons before the Iraq War, although associated with the political Right here in America on domestis issues, were therefore Liberal as to stated position when they said that Iraq could and should be invaded to be made a democracy.

That's Woodrow Wilson on steroids, and in international relations, Wilson was the Uber Liberal.

Maybe those claims on Iraq masked some other motives in many cases, but not at all always, and the reasons for an idealistic motive in American foreign policy date as far back in the history of the Republic as to Thomas Jefferson's support of the French Revolution and even the early Napoleon.

These notions carry through as a tendency in American foreign policy through Wilson making the world safe for Democracy in WWI, and FDR calling for the democratization of Germany and Japan in the Atlantic Charter, and really were the basis even of not a small amount of the American Establishment's support of the War in Vietnam prior to Tet in 1968, and lasted all the way to the call of Ronald Reagan to "tear down this wall" across Berlin, and even H.W. Bush's intervention in Panama, which did produce a democracy, if of course an imperfect one, but better than Noriega too.

Although foreigners have often by cynical about the actual motives of America not coinciding with her stated ideals, and they aren't all wrong, neither could any honest reading of American history conclude other than that America has something of a messianic streak as to believing that Democracy will cure all the world's ills.

Sometimes that can be a dangerous illusion, in defense of Realists concerns about Power and Security not grounded in traditional morality, and yet Realism by itself lacks a motive force in the end to sustain the efforts necessary to secure its stated ends, since people need ideals to a point to make sense of the sacrifices they make with particular force in foreign policy, which is with young men and women's lives.

Of course, practical realities of power politics often have dictated that America felt justified in supporting regimes like Mobutu in Zaire-Congo and Pinochet in Chile that went against our stated beliefs on this simple theory:"He's a bastard, but he's our bastard, and not the Russian's bastard."

That's the backdrop for the question of should we allow Assad to run amok in Homs, and finish what he's obviously getting ready to do, which is pave the ground with dead people while we watch and launch not even one sortie or raid.

As to the predictability of some peopel thinking they like this outcome in the short run, Bashar al Assad, if not as much of a client of the former U.S.S.R, is a Russian bastard still, along with China, and partly beyond material Russo-Chinese interests because the people who run China and Russia most definitely don't want the export of our form of government to their territory, and so support those whose fall might encourage such ideas, like in Syria now.

Of course, that fear is overstated, since one doesn't overturn the governments of nuclear armed states like Russia and China who also each have millions of men under arms ready to die for the Motherland.

As to Thermidor, that of course is the month in which the French Revolution began to end, with the assertion of reactionary ideals of stability over change.

It may or may not be the time for that Thermidor of the Arab Spring in Syria now, although how Bashar al Assad fits into that picture other than a decent interval remains to the author doubful, and why in terms of the oligarchies ruling Russia and China that they should rethink that.

What will happen to the exiles, and do Russia and China really want an emboldened Assad with WMD?

Those concerns are American concerns, but then there's a deeper one that is at the core of our identity: Democratic Idealism.

Thus, beyond our interests in a narrow sense, if we allow Assad to crush the Arab Spring in its modern Thermidor, will that not sit rather uneasily in our craw too?

finis