He ignored the plight of Syria's Kurds and other minorities and persecuted Sunnis and anyone else who openly or covertly opposed the regime. In each case, he either carried out token or limited reform in marginal ways or made no reforms at all, and chose to rely on repression and the support of a narrow elite at his people's expense.

Assad formally came to power in a rigged election, but was really chosen by his father, and then only as the result of a car accident that killed his brother-Bassel al-Assad-who had been designated as his father's original heir.Īssad had opportunity after opportunity to carry out political and economic reform after he came to power in July 2000. Bashar al-Assad came to power because of the ruthlessness of his father-Hafez al-Assad-who used massed artillery against his own people in an attack on Hama in 1982 to make it clear just how far his repression would go. No one, however, should have any illusions about being burned to death, the suffering caused by fragmentation wounds and collapsed buildings, by a gun shot, or by slowly dying of hunger, disease, or exposure when war drives you from your home.Ĭhemical weapons may be a useful excuse to act against Assad, but they are scarcely the core of the case against him. They kill silently and with little warning. The image of chemical weapons is particularly horrifying. Assad has used poison gas many times before, and while nerve gas is the most lethal deployed form of chemical weapons, it kills relatively quickly and mercifully compared to the chlorine gas the Assad regime has used since it supposedly gave up its chemical weapons. This is only one atrocity among many in the history of the Syrian civil war since 2011, and in the history of the Assad regime. It is critical, however, that these images be kept in perspective. No one can deny the horrifying nature of images of babies and children that have been killed by nerve gas.

Dead space butcher force gun