Loyalists of Syrian dictator Bashar Assad vandalized the U.S. embassy in Damascus on Monday, pelting it with eggs, rocks and tomatoes and scrawling anti-American graffiti on the facade. The attack was as audacious as it was misdirected. The center of U.S. criticism of Assad isn’t inside the embassy anymore, it’s on the embassy’s Facebook page.

Case in point: within hours of the attack, U.S. ambassador to Syria Robert Ford posted a decidedly undiplomatic condemnation on his Wall. “If they cared about their fellow Syrians the protesters would stop throwing this food at us and donate it to those Syrians who don’t have enough to eat,” Ford wrote. “And how ironic that the Syrian Government lets an anti-U.S. demonstration proceed freely while their security thugs beat down olive branch-carrying peaceful protesters elsewhere.”

In case anyone missed it, Ford’s missive had an Arabic translation below the English. It’s at 770 comments and 86 Likes two hours after going live. And that’s typical of the embassy’s Facebook page. It’s way less mealy-mouthed than the Obama administration’s IRL diplomacy.

Reportedly, the mob was prompted by Ford’s unexpected Friday visit to the town of Hama, an epicenter of anti-Assad sentiment. His car was mobbed by demonstrators. But in a reversal of familiar scenes of Mideast outrage, Syrians threw roses and olive branches at Ford, and chanted “Freedom!” in English. Dissidents immediately took the clip viral. Within hours, Ford became a folk hero of the Syrian uprising.

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