The Syrian revolution—a broad-based, non-sectarian, democratic anti-despot national movement—has failed.
Mass demonstrations never materialized in Damascus and Aleppo. The military and security forces didn’t crack. The Alawite on Sunni crackdown (Alawites form the backbone of the army/security forces/irregular goon squads) fomented sectarian divisions, with most non-Sunnis minorities cleaving desperately to the Assad regime. Prosperous Sunnis have presumably been hedging their bets by donating to the anti-government cause in recent days but have not explicitly abandoned the regime.
The Gulf powers and the West would have welcomed a Ba’athist regime collapse at the hand of domestic anti-government demonstrations.
That didn’t happen.
As the peaceful democratic movement has faltered, there has been no move from the Western/Gulf powers to encourage reconciliation and reforms.
The democratic revolution ship has sailed. What’s going on today is a foreign-supported insurrection.
The Syrian revolutionaries were too weak to get the nation they wanted.
They’ll have to make do with whatever state that Turkey, the Gulf powers, and the western democracies decide to give them.
