Well I think that you do not know the full timeline of events, Assad put down the initial protest with live fire and bullets that was a big mistake a mistake which the Egyptian military did not make if Egypt used live fire we know what would have happend there, Egypt has good riot control because they use them during the football matches
This incident happend on March 18 2011 in city of Derra at Omari mosque Syrian army opened fire live fire in civilians
Assad used jack boot tactics not welcomed during the time and place, Erdogan then offered Assad riot gear proper riot gear for controlling crowds, Assad refused and kept on using army to brutally suppress the uprisings
Then it became clear that wasn't working and he offered terms which were rejected, rejected because the whole thing had just gone too far
The Egyption army most certainly wasn't shy about using live ammo when they crushed unarmed civilians protesting their little coup. It wasn't all that long ago, surely you recall?
If anything, the brutality, loss if life and degree of the Egyption suppression of dissent put Assad's efforts to shame, and the Egyption generals offered not one shred of compromise. In a way, Egypt offers a very unique case study in seeing how different tactics to deal with massed populist protests can yield hugely different results.
The initial Egyption response was largely similar to what Assad was doing - relying mainly on non-lethal means to try to disperse crows, and only resorting to live ammo when that fails and even then in very limited cases resulting in some, but no many civilian casualties.
The result was that the small death toll enrages the public, drawing more and more people onto the streets.
In contrast, the generals seemed to have been busy examining their initial failings, because when they went after the Muslim brotherhood, they were shooting first and asking questions later. The death toll was far far higher, and that actually was enough to cow the vast majority of protestors and scare them into staying off the streets. That may be storing up trouble for the future, but at least there was no Syrian style uprising.
I guess if one was to draw an objective lession, it is that when it comes to crushing domestic dissent, too much force is always preferable to too little, and the Assad's biggest failing was his lack of resolve, which his enemies took as weakness.
Generals and their men never defect if the other side clearly hasn't got a chance, and protests do not spread and escalate if the protestors know going onto the streets means there is a very high chance they will end up in a body bag. There are some die hards who won't care, but for the overwhelming majority of people, they only joined in later, after it has been shown that protesting was relatively safe, and after a certain critical mass has been reached whereby people stop thinking as individuals and start taking on a collective will that is infectious and self sustaining. If you ever want to feel such a thing, just go to a major sporting event. You also can look at how easily sporting events can result in riots to see how easily such crowds can be stired into violence.
Had Assad been more brutal and decisive and crushed the early protests with overwhelming force and excessive brutality, there is a very good chance he could have nipped the uprising in the bud. But that is a stretch, because by far the biggest factor in the Syrian protests turning into a full blown civil war was the meddling of foreign powers.
One can easily draw parallels between Egypt and Syria to demonstrate how foreign support can prove decisive in pushing a protest movement into an armed uprising and civil war. Had the Muslim brotherhood had any sort of major foreign power providing it with moral, organisation, financial and even armed support, there is very little doubt in my mind that Egypt would have erupted in bloody civil war like Syria by now.
