In December 2010, the astute wife of the Syrian President was in Paris enlightening an elite French audience of Syrian history, its culture and secularism. She said "I am not trying to disguise culture as anything more than it is, and if I sound like I am talking politics, it is because we live in a politicized region, a politicized time, and we are affected by that.”

Paraphrasing the French envoy to Syria, she said that her country is modernizing itself and stands for a tolerant form of secularism in a powder-keg region and that the driving force against radicalism rests largely on the shoulders of one couple.

Asmaa al-Assad, the daughter of Syrian parents is a hard 'first-lady' act to follow. At the gathering, she proves incisive and well-read and is armed only with herself, without a prompter and without notes, a feat that would have 'demolished' not just her counterpart in the White House, but her teleprompter-inclined husband himself.

Bashar chose well.

Words - Tommy Peters