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This notion was reinforced by the genuine hospitality extended by Syrian society to the Lebanese refugees upon arrival. While semiofficial organizations like the Syrian Arab Red Crescent passed out water and food, it was the private sector that delivered truckloads of supplies. A phone booth set up by the mobile-phone operator Syriatel, owned by President Assad’s cousin Rami Makhlouf, offered free calls to anywhere in Syria and Lebanon. As Lebanese waited to pass immigration procedures, young activists from the Lawyers’ Syndicate—the equivalent of the Syrian Bar Association—and the Syrian Public Relations Association (led by Nizar Mayhoub, the Ministry of Information official responsible for foreign journalists) canvassed arriving cars and trucks, asking passengers if they had a place to stay in Damascus. Those in need of food and shelter were put in touch with Syrian families who had placed their names with the canvassers. “We have so many names!” one of them told me, pointing to a clipboard stuffed with papers in her hand.

All in all, more than 230,000 Lebanese refugees found shelter in Syria. Around 80 percent of those were housed in private Syrian homes. In many cases, sons moved back in with parents to make room for the war’s displaced. As I walked among the throng of vehicles making their way into Syria, I reflected on the soft power of Syrians’ generosity. I also sadly realized that the United States—the world’s superpower and the champion of globalization—had absolutely nothing to offer as a counterweight. “Assad is sitting pretty now,” a friend said to me later that evening. If a regime’s legitimacy doesn’t come from its people, the next best way to obtain it is by responding to an external threat.

At the offices of Syria Today, the magazine’s staff had put up Syrian flags and banners on the walls and affixed prints of photos showing children killed and wounded from Israeli bombs. Every day that the civilian death toll climbed, the staff became more nationalistic, including wearing pins with i love syria on the lapels of their jackets. Others wore Hezbollah T-shirts.

High civilian casualties seemed to be helping the regime’s case, even among the opposition. “We denounce the Israeli aggression against Lebanese civilians,” Hassan Abdel-Azim told us a few days later. “Israel cannot attack Lebanon without an approval and support from the United States. We call on the Syrian leadership to strengthen the national unity through more opening to the Syrian opposition to make Syria stronger to face the Israeli threats.”

Meshal Tammo, the secretary-general of the Kurdish Future Party, said they drew the line at violence against civilians as well. “We as a Kurdish people condemn all kinds of aggression and violence against the Lebanese civilians,” Tammo said. “We sympathize with Lebanese because our people [Kurds] face the massacres and killing [of] civilians. The war in Lebanon is a regional war between Syrian, Iranian, and Lebanese Hezbollah front and the United States, Israel, and some Arab states which follow the American orders. The war aims to change the game rules in the Middle East.”

Even Riad al-Turk, one of Syria’s most outspoken opposition leaders, toed the nationalist line, though ever so critically. “Lebanon is a yard for the world to fight in,” Turk said. “Lebanon is a part of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Israel and the US used the capturing of two Israeli soldiers as a pretext to wage a war against Lebanon. The Syrian stance to open the border to Lebanese civilians and humanitarian aid is acceptable. Syria should support the Lebanese by using its army. In this regard, the Syrian official stance is very weak.”

The US State Department soon leaked a plan in the New York Times that a new US policy was being formulated to drive a “wedge” between Syria and Iran, but it didn’t get anywhere.2 According to another Times report a few weeks later, Secretary of State Rice sent Deputy Chief of Mission Seche over to meet Syrian foreign minister