I don't know what to think of the pro-Syrian demonstration yesterday. I can read the Lebanese and Beirut blogs and reassure myself that it's just the old tyrannical mob-mobilization tactics at work, but it's pretty damn easy to coddle yourself with those who are telling you what you want to hear, isn't it? (Omar from Iraq the Model pitches in to describe the festivities as echoing the usual Baath tactics, but once again, what I want to hear...)

The fact remains that Hezbollah and the Syrians between themselves put at least 200K men in the heart of Beirut. That's a lot of bodies, and a lot of young military-age bodies at that. Even if they were coerced, ordered, shangaied, and shipped in, that still represents a capacity for crowd control and logistics which suggests that the weakness of the tyrants is exaggerated, suggests that the totalitarians can still totalize their masses against the will of the individuals of the whole.

Not good, not good at all.