Syrian Spring, Arab Spring

We peer into the uprising and brutal crackdown in Syria. Will the "Arab Spring" come to a grinding halt at Syria's doorstep, or will it sweep away the Assad regime along with the others?

The jumpy, helter-skelter cell phone videos coming out of Syria are terrifying.

Tanks and heavy machine gun fire tearing up streets full of screaming, running protestors. Defiance. Blood. Funerals. Despair.

Syria is not Egypt. Not Tunisia. Not even Libya. There is no NATO intervention here, just a hot wing of the Arab Spring grinding up against a determined dictator whose army is fully ready to shoot and kill.

And yet, Syria is in the heart of the Arab world. If the power falls here, all bets are off. For Jordan, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran.

This hour On Point: Uprising and crackdown in Syria.
- Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Anthony Shadid joins us from Beirut, Lebanon. He is a Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign correspondent for the New York Times.

Rami Khouri also joins us from Beirut. He is an internationally-syndicated columnist and editor-at-large for Lebanon’s Daily Star Newspaper and Director of the Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University in Beirut.

Joshua Landis, joins us from Norman, Oklahoma. He is Director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma. He runs a blog called “SyriaComment.com.”

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