>
> It looks to me like what happened in Syria is an old story: an ethnic
> minority is placed in power by imperialists and finds that only through
> brutal repression can they stay in power. Eventually, this gets old for
> the repressed majority, and they revolt.
>
Yep. That's the size of it. Three additional points: (1) the Assad regime really is evil, and really did use chemical weapons to murder thousands of its own citizens in its own capital city on August 21, 2012. We have massive overconfirmation of this crime, from citizen journalists, intelligence services, regime defectors, Youtube videos, Doctors Without Borders, etc. The rebels do not have massed artillery or the means to create weaponized shells, or the systems to deliver those shells on a mass scale. (2) The world can and should take out Assad's aircraft and Scud missiles. These are pure terror weapons, useless in Syria's grinding guerilla war, but capable of killing lots of innocent civilians. The Syrians will take care of the rest. (3) None of this is justification for the ghastly Terror War of the US empire or its drone bomb campaigns against imaginary enemies. But the Assadist regime really has degenerated into an ethno-nationalist killing machine.
Resources on the Syrian revolution:
https://twitter.com/AmalHanano
Videos of the Ghouta massacre (warning: some of these are really, really, really disturbing):http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPC0Udeof3T4NORTjYmPoNCHn2vCByvYG
Doctors Without Borders statement on Ghouta: http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/press/release.cfm?id=7029&cat=press-release -- DRR