[bert]

Syria and Russia and Iran are now the bad guys in Syria.

[ek_hornbeck]

So what is the alternative to Syria's current government (the same question that should have been asked before the Obama administration and your fellow neocons advocated Gaddafi's overthrow in Libya)?

If Assad goes, Syria's best-case scenario outcome will be "moderate" Sunni Islamism in the Muslim Brotherhood mold or (more likely) hardline Islamism along the lines of the Al Nusra front. The notion that the anti-Assad rebels are made up of western-style advocates of secular, constitutional republican government is idiocy that only people like McCain and Hillary were stupid enough to believe.