A piece in Foreign Policy by Randa Slim, "a scholar at the Middle East Institute", on the Syrian opposition claims:
a critical mass of Syrians has clearly opted for regime change
It does not provide one fact to support that conclusion. Scanning the news from Syria my impression is that the opposition to Bashar Assad, which obviously never achieved critical mass over the last months, is now shrinking.
Indeed just two days ago the Wall Street Journal prominently headlined: Syrian Activists Say Assad Gains Advantage:
Last week, massive crowds gathered in several cities, including Damascus, to pledge their loyalty to Mr. Assad. Syria's state television, broadcasting scenes of crowds chanting "The people want Bashar al-Assad," said some two million people gathered at the capital's Ummayad Square last Wednesday. It broadcast fresh scenes of a loyalist demonstration in the southern city of Suweida on Sunday.
"At one point, what we call the silent majority came to be aligned with the street protests at least from a humanitarian and moral point of view. But now they've stepped back again," Mr. Hussein said.
One can assess the quality of the propaganda messaged by that "scholar at the Middle East Institute" from this passage further down in the piece:
Most of the Syrian opposition agrees on a few basic principles: toppling the Assad regime, maintaining the national unity of Syria, and remaining committed to the peaceful nature of the Syrian revolution. But there are sharp disagreements over dialogue with the regime, foreign intervention, and the militarization of the opposition.
So they are committed to a "peaceful" revolution but can not decide whether they want NATO to bomb their country or continue the militant guerrilla war against the regime.
And the discussion about that shows their principle commitments to stay "peaceful"?
If such incoherent writing expresses the "scholar-"ship of Randa Slim and the "Middle East Institute" readers are advised to dismiss everything coming from that source.