Syria's Bloody Crackdown

Jacki Lyden in for Tom Ashbrook

The Syrian regime has been called horrific, but it continues to slaughter its citizens. How should the world react?

Syria. Biblical land, Citadel of Aleppo, the Damascus Souk and the street called Straight, the monuments of Palmyra.

And an international pariah, and a nation which the U.N. says "has lost all sense of humanity."

As tanks fire into city neighborhoods, questions linger about who Bashar al-Assad’s opponents are. Hundreds of civilians have been killed by the regime, with the death atoll rising sharply this past weekend and tens of thousands of Syrians are risking their liberty to demonstrate.

This hour On Point: what should we, and can we, do about Syria?
-Jacki Lyden
Guests:

Deborah Amos, Middle East correspondent for National Public Radio. You can hear one or her reports from Syria here.

Murhaf Jouejati, professor of Middle East studies at the National Defense University. He's also a lecturer in political science and international affairs at George Washington University, and a scholar at the Middle East Institute.

Ausama Monajed, an exiled Syrian dissident based in London.

From The Reading List:

• The Washington Post: "Conventional wisdom suggests that Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, like Moammar Gaddafi in Libya, will weather the Arab Spring by brutality alone. But the Assad regime’s days are numbered. "