A brief respite from the "Assad the Butcher" hysterics.

The tyrant stuff is frankly overblown. Context is key here. Bashar Assad was born into the ruling family, but by all accounts, the last thing Bashar Assad ever wanted to do was rule Syria. He became an eye doctor, of all things. He was doing his ophthalmology residency, living in London with his attractive wife, when the call came that his older brother who was being groomed to take over, had died in a car accident.

If you're Bashar Assad, what do you do? Do you stay in London and hope for the best? That may not be a great strategy even if that was his inclination, because if the regime were to fall, he probably wouldn't have a nice life in London like nothing ever happened. No, he'd probably be hounded like Gaddafi's sons. So he took the job.

Then your father dies and you're appointed president. Now what do you do? Just call free elections? Not that simple, because there are a lot of vested interests in Syria other than your immediate family -for example the military. You do that, and there could be a military coup the next day.

So he charted an extremely cautious course -limited reforms, all the while rightfully wary of extremist elements that could bubble up from just below the surface. And of course mindful of the fact that there's a simmering destabilization campaign funded by the United States. Did he crack down too hard on the protesters? Maybe. But if he didn't crack down hard *enough*, he risked Gaddafi's fate. In the end he was proven right that extremist elements would come to the forefront of the Syrian opposition.

You play with the cards you're given. It's easy to criticize Assad as a tyrant, but if any of us were born with his set of cards, I'm not sure we'd play them any differently. And if we did, things might be worse.

Comment by Greg on "'Free Syrian Army' on the Verge of Total Collapse." By Slobodan Lekic, Russian Insider, 12/17/15. Originally published at Stars and Stripes, 12/13/15.