In light of the failed UN vote and a serious escalation in the mechanics of murder by Assad's forces today, forcing the US to close down its embassy in Damascus, Michael Weiss renews the call for intervention:
Here is the real travesty of this revolution. Russia, Iran and Hezbollah have all been "intervening" in Syria’s internal affairs for ten months now. Meanwhile, the Arab League, the United States and the European Union have all determined that any claim to sovereignty Assad might have had in 2011 is null and void in 2012. What is needed, therefore, is not condemnations, demarches and shuttered embassies but a Western equivalent of intervention in Syria, namely in the form of:
• Humanitarian "safe areas" to provide food, aid and medical supplies to the civilian population and give the various opposition groups a headquarters inside their own country
• Advanced weapons and communication devices for the Syrian rebels
• A no-fly zone to stop the regime from using its aircraft to conduct reconnaissance, offload security personnel and – yes – strafe rebel strongholds from the sky.
Shadi Hamid, though he says an intervention is premature, wants Obama to seriously consider the option. But it's still not clear how any proposal would get us closer to a post-Assad world rather than a devastating civil war. Daniel Serwer proposes non-violent options:
What the United States, Europe and the Arab League need to do now is to keep up the pressure by maintaining and tightening sanctions, redeploying the observers if it is safe enough to do so and encouraging continued nonviolent protest in forms (boycotts in particular) that do not expose large numbers of people to the regime’s violence. They also need to consider new measures: blockade of arms shipments? extension of the financial sanctions used against Iran to Syria? Reinforcement of the Arab League observers?
Indeed, the US is going down some of these roads already. Maysaloon wants the world to focus on countering Assad's propaganda. Robert Mackey profiles [NYT] a Syrian dissident who has started giving English-language tours of the horror in Homs. His heartwrenching video at a rebel hospital is seen above. It's much harder to find videos of non-violent protests in Syria as the crackdown intensifies, but brave Syrians like these students in Idlib aren't giving up:
This video documents the utter callousness of the Syrian army – running straight over a child in the middle of road:
The Dish 
