What level of responsibility do the Syrian people have for maintaining the Assad government?
I am not one who will excuse the Syrian people from responsibility. We have put up with this regime for too long and the opposition groups have really had a lot of stock in this government up until the last few months. Syrian opposition groups recently issued the Damascus Declaration, which signals many important changes. Significantly, the secularists and Islamists agreed on something; most important, it is not reform that they are asking for now but rather the creation of an alternative to the regime. President Assad is neither an all-inspiring figure nor an intimidating leader like his father, the late President Hafez Assad. Just recently there were some protests against a trial of some Kurdish activists and 10 people were arrested. If this sort of thing had happened when his father was alive the crackdown would have been bloody and swift; but times have changed. No one can do this bloody crackdown any more. Syria is not Uzbekistan: You cannot simply send the troops against demonstr
