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Syrian government resigns

Kandahar

Kandahar

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(CNN) -- The Syrian government resigned Tuesday amid an unusual wave of unrest that has roiled the nation, state TV reported.
President Bashar al-Assad accepted the resignations Tuesday, the same day that tens of thousands of Syrians poured onto the streets of Damascus to demonstrate in favor of the government.
A new government should be named in a few hours, said Reem Haddad, a spokeswoman for the Syrian Information Ministry.

Syrian government resigns - CNN.com
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...and Assad's government becomes the latest Arab state to collapse in the face of democracy protests. Although Assad himself is still in power (for now), things are looking pretty bleak for the Syrian regime's survival.
 
we can only hope. Libya is small potatos next to Syria.
 
Kandahar said:
...things are looking pretty bleak for the Syrian regime's survival.
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The Assad dictatorship is highly unlikely to yield power on its own. Indeed, far from offering a message of conciliiation, the regime attacked the protesters in language not dissimilar from that deployed by Col Gadhafi, namely that outsiders had duped the people. The BBC reported:

President Bashar al-Assad has told parliament Syria will defeat those behind a "plot" against his country...

People were "duped" to go into the streets, he said, in his first speech since anti-government demonstrations erupted two weeks ago.

The regime will not yield voluntarily. For Bashar Assad to do so would, in effect, require him to take a step that he would perceive would be an abandonment of everything his father had achieved. For him, that would amount to a treasonous act against his family (constraints that did not exist in the case of President Mubarak). Therefore, there is no possibility whatsoever that he would voluntarily relinquish power or significantly reallocate it to an elected body. Given those circumstances, the regime will use massive force to retain power if that becomes necessary (probably not likely, as he still enjoys substantial support), especially as it calculates that it is highly unlikely that the U.S. or other Western Powers would intervene in its civil war, were such a conflict to erupt. Such non-intervention would not be driven by principle--no critical U.S. interests were at stake in Libya--but by the limits of how much intervention the U.S./Western Powers and their general public can tolerate.
 
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Kandahar said:
...and Assad's government becomes the latest Arab state to collapse in the face of democracy protests. Although Assad himself is still in power (for now), things are looking pretty bleak for the Syrian regime's survival.
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Is this a genuine change in government or just a political stunt by Assad? We can only hope for the former.

It is promising and hopefully this tyrant will leave before gunning down his people.
 
Only time will tell

I had a long talk about this danger with President Bashar Asad’s chief advisor, the very smart, and worldly Bouthaina Shaaban, who is much in the news these days. Her view is that Asad the younger and his coterie of technocrats will slowly but surely achieve modernizing reforms and put Syria on the path to democracy. Madame Shaaban told me that Western intrigues against Syria, and Israel threats, have played a major role in keeping the nation under siege mentality and delaying meaningful reform.

A big change in Syria was expected when the youthful Bashar Asad took power. It did not happen. The conservative Ba’ath Old Guard thwarted any major changes.

There are at least two major factions within the Asad regime. The "old guard" wants to crush all dissent, pointing to events in other Arab nations. The younger, reformist camp wants to end martial law and create a real parliament and free press. Syria’s important merchant class is strongly in favor of opening the economy and society, and seeing the last of Syria’s wretched "Arab Socialism" that mixed the worst of East European economic quackery with Arab inertia and tribalism.

Events inside Syria are far too complex for Washington to understand right now. Ending sanctions against Syria, restraining Israel’s interventionist hawks, and applauding democrats from the sidelines is the best thing the US can do for the time being. Syria is no place for the usual US bull in the china shop behavior.
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Syria Coming to a Boil by Eric Margolis
 
Ron Mars said:
Is this a genuine change in government or just a political stunt by Assad? We can only hope for the former.

It is promising and hopefully this tyrant will leave before gunning down his people.
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IMO, change will be more cosmetic than real. Bashar Assad is fervently committed both to his ideology and maintaining political dominance. Those matters are non-negotiable, as far as he is concerned. Substantive changes that could lead to ideological alternatives or erode his power would not be acceptable. Not surprisingly--at least to those who are familiar with Mr. Assad and his worldview--he did not announce a lifting of the state of emergency nor provide any meaningful substantive reforms. The state of emergency may be lifted down the road, but only after Mr. Assad and his regime have put in place an alternative framework that serves largely the same purpose. Hence, the change would be symbolic, only. In terms of concrete substance things would remain pretty much as they presently are when it comes to domestic security.
 
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