Al-Assad will pay heavy price for only showing ‘courage’ to babies in cradle: Turkish PM

[Scootaloo]

55. So who's taking Assad's spot in Syria, then?

See, that's the funny thing about these strongarm dictator-types. They're shits, but they're also the nation's self-destruct button. You mash it, and the whole place goes absolutely to hell. Power consolidation tends to make transfers of power more or less impossible.

So, who's next in line? His son flew through a windshield a good while back, so that's no good. "The generals?" Oh yeah, there's a good idea, since Baath protocols basically put the heads of the armed forces in competition against each other specifically to keep them from challenging the President's power. You want all the Warlord-state chaos of Afghanistan, but aren't real keen on mountains, well, there's your next best thing, folks.

So that's leaving... who, exactly? The rebels? You mean those Salafist freaks who apparently used nerve gas quite recently? Yeah that's just who we all want in power. If the goal is to reduce the number of Syrian deaths, you don't want these folks in charge. So why are Israel and the US supporting these guys? Maybe because terrorist option B is Hezbollah. Fewer dead Syrians perhaps, but 100% chance of Golan becoming a battleground again.

Regime change is tricky stuff, and the nations most fond of it aren't so good at "change" so much as "toppling, then fucking off like nothing happened."