"Brutality sometimes works. The numbers of people willing to die or to face imprisonment by taking to Syria’s streets have so far proved less overpowering than those in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Libya, and Yemen. Syria is a mosaic of religions, sects, and ethnicities, and the Assad family, from the Alawite minority, is well practiced in the art of divide-and-conquer. Large sections of the urban middle classes and the Christian minority have so far stayed at home. Nonetheless, the revolt is far from expiring. On “The Syrian Revolution 2011,” a Facebook page that has played a part in the unrest, users issue polemics and post fresh video clips about every ten minutes. Pop political art and photographs of bloodied young men scroll by—part media installation, part war-crimes documentary. The day after Obama’s speech, thousands of Syrians took to the streets; the police reportedly shot and killed at least twenty people.
American policy toward Syria presents mainly a record of failure. One strain of that policy has sought unsuccessfully, through diplomatic engagement, to coax Assad to instigate internal reforms; weaken Syria’s alliances with Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas; and broker a peace with Israel. As recently as 2008, Assad told an American diplomat that he was “a few words away” from an agreement with Israel. He never delivered. Washington has also sought to pressure Assad through sanctions imposed by the Syria Accountability Act of 2003, and by covertly funding democratic campaigners, in a program that was initiated under George W. Bush. That didn’t work, either. The Damascus Declaration activists publicly rejected American support, and the covert program, recently exposed by WikiLeaks, endangered some of the people it was designed to help."
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http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2011/05/30/110530taco_talk_coll
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