Ominous sounds out of Syria.

The house I grew up in was on a heavily wooded lot. My dad, no fool he, would occasionally hand me an axe and point out a tree he deemed superfluous, saving himself the work and giving me a way to "build character". When a tree is "ready" to go it starts to emit cracking and snapping sounds, and occasionally an eerily animal scream. It's your signal to back away (and shout "timber!" as loud as you can. Great fun!) Micheal Totten thinks we may be getting the same sort of signals out of Syria.

I want to say something encouraging, but it’s hard. These are dangerous days in Syria. Nothing good will happen there while the Baath regime is in charge. It’s an obstacle that absolutely must be cleared out of the way. So the fact that Ammar detects the odor of fear coming off the regime is at least some reason to hope. There are always reasons to hope. And there are some that Ammar seems to forget about.

Totalitarian regimes almost always disintegrate rapidly and seemingly out of the blue. I’m a bit surprised to find myself writing about the possible implosion of the Middle East’s other Baath Party state at all. I knew it would happen at some point, but in early February there was no way to say it would happen in early March.

If it really is the beginning of the end of the Assad regime (do keep in mind that it might not be) events on the ground one month from now will be just as astonishing and hard to predict. Ammar Abdulamid may have little hope at this moment, but history is swinging on its hinges again. In a few weeks he may find that he lives in a different and barely recognizable country.

Micheal has found (via Marc Cooper) a Syrian blogger, Ammar Abdulhamid, providing gripping reports from inside the tottering totalitarian state. (Go to Michael's and Ammar's blogs to read it all.)

Totten is concerned that Syria will be an "emergency room case" if once the regime falls, but that seems like a solvable problem. He does suggest that the western powers should be thinking about how to handle the vacuum created by the departing Baathists. I suspect that the experience of post-collapse Iraq is still fresh on some minds and plans are being developed, at least I hope so. It would be nice if this was more of an international effort, including some of the Muslim nations perhaps.

The Syrian leadership must be thinking about the fates of their old friends to the east. Most of the Iraqi Baathists are either rotting in a grave, awaiting imminent trial, cowering in Syria, or fighting a losing insurgency. Not a happy prospect for the Syrians. We could probably speed things along by providing the regime with an exit option. The perfect way, perhaps, for our European and moderate Arab friends to get involved. They can fly the leaders out and move in to do peacekeeping. Should be good PR for them and we (the US) get an end to the supply-line feeding the Iraq insurgency.