>Claiming that Government propaganda is all about using the divide as you say, doesn't mean they are necessarily wrong. An argumentation other then "Ba'athis use it ,so it's wrong ",would help.
Your initial proposition is a straw man. Democracy and secularism are not mutually exclusive in Syria. The absence of Assad does not imply radicalization - that was just an unfounded assumption on your part.
>Irakisation of Syria is a risk you cannot deny,....Syria is willing to take it?...some thinks yes ....I think no....
'Iraqisation' can only happen after a civil war, it can not happen through protests alone, though the latter could lead to the former if Assad decides to murder more protesters.
>when you say "Secularism is not threatened"...how can you justify?..how can you guarantee it's not gonna go south?
My reasoning is that the protest backers are all secular: Haitham Maleh, Haitham Manna'a, Riyad Seif, Riyad Turk, Suheir Atassi and others from the civil society movement, the Damascus Declaration For Democratic Change and the PCA (Party Of Communist Action) - all belong to the liberal/secular/marxist factions.
>When I say any price , YES, If I had to choose between 1000 deaths or a war.
This, my friend, is the epitome of selfishness. Launching a war of extermination to protect a minority (or a majority) is a behavior that belongs in a jungle rather than a civil society. Come to think of it, I used to know a Ba'athist who pretty much said the same thing - except that he substituted 'secularism' with 'keeping us in power'.
>And if you think that a small video on the net is "Eternal Humiliation" , you need some relativism my friend !!
Not at all. That video was shows a single instance of physical humiliation under the Assad regime. If you want to know what eternal humiliation really means, then I suggest you read "Ambiguities of Domination", by Lisa Weeden.
>But again it's all about risk assessments.
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable"
-- John F. Kennedy
All dictatorships have an expiration date - the Assad dictatorship has one too, and it will fall sooner or later. The factors for its collapse inherently belong to its character (As'ad Abu-Khalil explains it here), so it will always have to defeat revolutionary movements in order to survive. It's not a question of 'when?', it's a question of 'how?' - how would you prefer the Ba'ath regime collapse?
Option 1: The current revolution succeeds - power is eventually handed over to the army or the current coalition of secular opposition forces, and a transition to democracy will be implemented according to a timetable (Tunisia/2011)
Option 2: The current revolution fails - the secular opposition is completely stamped-out, and its Nasserist/Communist/Socialist/Liberal leaders are all jailed, tried, and executed eventually. The only viable opposition faction remaining is the revitalized National-Religious force (Hizb ut-Tahrir, Muslim Brotherhood), which would inevitably succeed in gaining power in any future revolution, that will almost-certainly be armed (Iran/1979)
As you said, it's all about risk-assessments. The difference between my risk assessment and yours is that mine is a long-term one.
Hey, thanks, I'm kind of used to these guys in real life - never thought I'd see one of them on reddit.
I'm willing to cut centrinos some slack though, because I used to think (or not think) like him in the past. What can I say... The Syrian state has an interesting way of indoctrinating the populace - they do start with you in elementary school after all, which, combined with the culture of fear ("Walls have ears"), is quite effective in producing perfectly obedient citizens, incapable of questioning any kind of higher authority. Assad knew how to sell slogans a market himself.
Come to think of it, the Syrian state is something that could've come out of a George Orwell novel, except that the citizenry is aware of its situation, adapted to it, and accepted the status quo as a fact of life. You can probably call it Stalinism 2.0
The machinations of the Syrian state are a rather hairy subject, and I doubt I can describe all that in the scope of this post. Lisa Weeden's book gives an in-depth view on this matter, in a probably more accurate manner than a random redditor in a forgotten thread :)