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Pizza from the oven, a beer from the fridge, dinner is ready, the TV is on, the world is on flames. Prices rising, crisis peaking, higher and sharper every night. The beer tastes good. The crust of the pizza is crisp and the prosciutto juicy. A masterpiece.

For four months now, the people of Libya have been fighting their leader, their father, their ersatz god, their oppressor and tyrant. For four months they have been crying for freedom and dying for it. The world has been watching with interest at first, then they sent in forces that operate almost unknown.

On TV, what few pictures there are, I see sweaty faces, veins bulging from screaming, fear in eyes but also hope and and promise, exhaustion and determination. Tomorrow might be, tomorrow must be, tomorrow will be a better day, they seem to be saying, and they keep saying it, day upon day.

But I also see a stalemate that not even low-flying attack choppers can break. Is it a revolution if internal dissent is so sparse that a regime hangs on without troubles even when bombarded by a willing coalition of substantial military firepower? Do I do the rebels injustice when I ask how much they represent the people? Where are the people in Tripoli? Where are the people where it matters? And why is the West incapable of decisive action?

Why did they/we choose to intervene in the first place? A brutal dictator slaughtering dissidents doesn't normally raise eyebrows. But the exuberance of a new world order in North Africa led the West into a quick quagmire. I'm not denying the freedom fighters support, but I wonder why they among many deserving parties got it.

On 30 Sept 2009, I drove a rattling Kia north from the town of Hama, Syria. In a country of eternal history, where 3000-year-old walls are a matter of fact, Hama comes as a shock. The only old buildings are a lonely mosque and the palace of the former Ottoman governor. Everything else dates from the last 30 years. It's not that Hama isn't an old city. It counts among those with longest continuous habitation. But of its glory not much remains.

Hama has risen from the ruins of total devastation after President Assad punished an Islamist uprising in the town with heavy artillery and airborne shelling, killing a reported 30,000 and displacing many more. The day after the destruction of the city was like the day before. Life in Syria continued, and questions were not allowed.

I turned the Kia off the main highway at Maraat al-Numaan, an insignificant patch of dusty sprawl halfway between Hama and Aleppo. There was little grass and not much prosperity, just five roads to dubious destinations. I didn't even stop for gas (later regretted) and drove on towards excitement and adventure.

Yesterday I read that President Assad, son of the same and just as bad, has ordered his army to focus the guns of its tanks on Maraat al-Numaan where anti-government demonstrations have apparently been staged. With the world watching, history is repeating itself. People will be killed for the vanity and anxiety of a hapless ruler, people whose only crime has been to question authority.

It's not the brutality of the regime that shocks me – it's a brutal regime, after all – but the silence of the watching world. Is it stunned surprise? Is it helplessness? Is it the painful realization that the defenders of freedom are stretched too thin? It's all of the above, probably, and it's certainly shameful. The free world gobbles pizza and beer instead of fighting for our values.