Buoyed by the apparent success of the Libyan rebels, thousands of Syrians poured into the streets this week, calling for President Bashar al-Assad to step down. “Qaddafi is gone; now it’s your turn, Bashar!” demonstrators shouted in cities across Syria. For the first time, President Obama called on Assad to step down, accusing him of “imprisoning, torturing, and slaughtering his own people.” Obama also banned the import of Syrian oil, and the European Union was taking steps to do the same. But the Syrian dictator remained defiant. He called Obama’s words “meaningless” and said they would be heeded only by “people who are submissive to America.”
Obama took an “agonizingly” long time to get around to calling for Assad’s ouster, said Martin Indyk in TheDailyBeast.com. The president waited through five months of protesters pouring into the streets, and Assad’s regime murdering more than 2,000 people. The “abundance of caution” is the result of the heat Obama took for calling on other dictators to quit during the “Arab Spring.’’ Mideast allies were alarmed when Obama quickly abandoned Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, and he was heavily criticized at home for deciding to side with Libyans rebelling against Muammar al-Qaddafi. This time, Obama waited until Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia denounced Assad.
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Not as long as the Syrian opposition resists the temptation to ask for aid, said Bilal Y. Saab in CSMonitor.com. If Assad’s opponents can unite and overthrow him, they will have great credibility in the Arab world. But for now, unfortunately, “the balance of forces currently tilts heavily in Assad’s favor.”