[syria and iran] strange bedfellows indeed

I’ve just been wading through pages and pages of Syrian related articles, trying to get a line on what it’s about. Why is Syria a pariah in the Arab world? Why is the US strangely ambivalent on the country, compared to, say, Iran? The closest I can get is Rick Francona, a former U.S. military attaché in Damascus and a Middle East analyst for NBC News, who says: “Bashar’s not the leader his father was. He’s a technocrat. He never consolidated his power; he’s trying to please too many people and he’s deluding himself.” Here is an analysis cobbled together from various sources.