CAIRO — Military troops opened fire on protesters in the southern part of Syria on Friday, according to news reports quoting witnesses, hurtling the strategically important nation along the same trajectory that has altered the landscape of power across the Arab world.
Tens of thousands of demonstrators in the southern city of Dara’a, on the border with Jordan, and in some other cities and towns around the nation took to the streets in protest, defying a state that has once again demonstrated its willingness to use lethal force. It was the most serious challenge to 40 years of repressive rule by the Assad family since 1982, when the president at the time, Hafez al-Assad, massacred at least 10,000 protesters in the northern Syrian city of Hama.
Human rights groups said that since protests began seven days ago in the south, 38 people had been killed by government forces — and it appeared that many more were killed on Friday. Precise details were difficult to obtain Friday because the government sealed off the area to reporters and denied access to the country to foreign news media.
Or maybe we have to wait until Syria is using its air force to bomb its dissidents and rebels. I'm not sure. I can't really keep up with our justifications for launching misguided conflicts anymore, but there's a humanitarian crisis brewing, so we should probably throw a billion or two at the problem while telling our own citizens to tighten their belts and get used to 9% unemployment.
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