i'm going to do something nobody else is doing. bizarrely.
i'm going to call for an election in syria and suggest that any lifting of sanctions should be tied to it's successful conclusion. assad said he was trying to transition to a democracy, but couldn't while he was fighting off islamists (although one will note that there were several elections in syria and they seemed to make it clear that the junta was seen as preferable to the islamists by almost all). nonetheless, the lack of elections, accurately or not, was repeatedly cited as a reason sanctions were placed on assad. while i'm perhaps being naive in expecting something less than abject hypocrisy from europe and north america, these new dictators should be held to the same terms.
if we're going to criticize assad for being undemocratic, we should also criticize the islamists for being undemocratic and expect them to hold immediate elections to determine what direction the syrian people want to actually move in - towards wahhabism, as is apparently going to be enforced, or towards secularism and even towards europe itself.