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Source: http://blogs.cfr.org/abrams/2012/02/21/what-next-on-syria/
What Next on Syria?
(Council on Foreign Relations) Elliott Abrams - The Assad regime is vicious and repressive. It has no legitimacy and holds on to power by brute force alone. It is also Iran's only Arab ally, the arms supplier to Hizbullah, and an enemy of the U.S. that worked hard to send jihadis to Iraq to kill Americans. So the fall of the regime should be an American policy goal, and in this we will have considerable Arab and European support. The likely Sunni-led replacement will not have the close relationship with Iran and Hizbullah that the Assad clique has established. The Free Syrian Army, which began with little more than press releases, is now a force in the thousands and we should be helping arm and fund it. Why? Because the real questions in Syria now are who will win and how long will this take. We ought to find an Assad victory (or perhaps one should say an Assad, Russian, Chinese, Iranian, and Hizbullah victory) unacceptable. The writer is a senior fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at CFR.