00:00Michael, first to you on this. Is this a genuine move, do you think, to protect the Druze civilians?
00:05Or is this political necessity that we're seeing here under the pressure of the Israeli and the local forces as well?
00:10So I think it was a political necessity on the part of the Syrian president,
00:14but I do not think it had anything to do with the threat from the Israelis.
00:19You have to understand that, you know, look, in Syria it's made up of so many minorities.
00:25And I think what the president is doing is stepping away from what would have happened in the past.
00:32You know, the Assads came into power in 1971, and a great example of the way that they ruled.
00:37In 1982, Thomas Friedman, New York Times columnist, coined this in his book, From Beirut to Jerusalem.
00:43He has a chapter called Hama Rules. Hama's about 50 kilometers north of Damascus.
00:50Small town, they've got these beautiful water wheels.
00:52And there was an uprising there, and the president sent in the troops, and they killed anywhere from 10,000 to 20,000 Syrians.
01:01That traditionally would have been the way that a Syrian president would have handled dissent.
01:06Here, what the Syrian president has done is, I think, an incredibly bold move.
01:12And it also sets the tone that he comes across very confident and a real leader because most leaders would not feel comfortable delegating and assigning local communities to handle their own issues.
