Crimes of the Syrian regime

"But what is the fallout from the crumbling of this façade? First, it may help to explain the cognitive dissonance some regime supporters had between the alleged popularity of Bashar al-Asad and the actual level of hatred that people had towards the regime. Many people also mistook the level of hatred as coming from the violent regime response to the uprisings themselves and not, as in fact they were, an accumulation of decades of oppression. Second, once the “acting as if” genie is out of the bottle, it cannot be pacified with any amount of reform. Although the regime has not offered any meaningful political reform, there is a certain truth to what many insiders believed: no amount of reform can placate the protestors. Therefore, I do not believe, as many do, that the President’s first speech could have been a dramatic turning point. If the President had come out in favor of an immediate democratic transition, he may have placated the demands of some, but it is unlikely to have altered the way the protests spread across the country. Yes, the President’s arrogant speeches made him increasingly the target of the protests, but the uprising was really an expression of the collective anger against the structure of terror that is the Syrian regime. In that sense, the removal of the Asad family from power as a precondition for a comprehensive post-uprising solution is a result of more than just the crimes the regime committed in the immediate aftermath of the uprising."