Hold Your Horses. Assad is Not Falling Anytime Soon

Amid the constant coverage of demonstrations in Syria, it is easy to get carried away and believe that Assad will be facing a Gaddafi-esque fate very soon. Here are two articles to sober you up and make your expectations more realistic:

Why Assad need not fear Gaddafi’s fate, by Ed Husain, Wall Street Journal:

In truth, Mr Assad’s regime is much less likely to fall than that of Muammer Gaddafi: there have been no high-profile political or military defections, while Mr Assad remains relatively popular among senior military commanders, Syrian mosque clerics, the middle-classes and business leaders.

Assad Knows What He’s Doing, by Gary C. Gambill, The National Interest:

Assad’s strategy and tactics have proven astonishingly effective. By any objective measure of political vulnerability, Assad should have been among the first casualties of the Arab Spring. That he’s held on this long is no small achievement.

If you got bummed, you can always go back to watching Aljazeera..