Syria’s Assad rebuked

The Turkish Prime Minister and the U.N. have joined the diplomatic voices arrayed against the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, fresh from a rebuke by the Arab League, appeared increasingly isolated this week after his onetime ally Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan bluntly told him to step down and the U.N. strongly condemned his regime. Invoking the bloody end of Libya’s Muammar al-Qaddafi, Erdogan warned Assad to “remove yourself from that seat” or risk suffering a similar fate. The eight-month uprising against the Assad regime, during which more than 3,500 people have been killed, escalated this week, with reports of military defections to the opposition and insurgent attacks on government offices in Damascus. In the western city of Homs, fighting has swelled between the minority Alawites, Syria’s ruling sect, and the majority Sunni population, raising fears that the conflict could descend into all-out sectarian war.

It’s time for the butcher of Damascus to head into exile, said The Wall Street Journal in an editorial. If he won’t go quietly, the U.S. and others should “bolster the opposition” and impose more sanctions in order to further “tighten the economic noose.” Military intervention “shouldn’t be ruled out.”

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