"Syria isn’t so much a country as it is an exhibit for Dictatorship Inc., the main purpose of which is to show that resistance really is futile. That’s why Russia doesn’t shrink from bombing civilian hospitals, or Hezbollah from starving entire cities into submission, or Assad from using chemical weapons. They are showing their respective publics the lengths to which they are prepared to go to maintain their own grip on power."
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Bret Stephens, "The Rise of Dictatorship Incorporated" (2 March 2018), The New York Times
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Syrian_civil_war
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Bret Stephens
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