unfortunately for him, Bashar Al-Assad isn't Assad Sr. Politics isn't about raw IQ, there's cunning and ruthlessness involved. Assad Jr. should've stayed an army medic, maybe he would've been good as Minister of Health or even Minister of Defense, but he is not suited for the big job.
It doesn't look like Assad even wants to fight considering he rejected Iranian help, hasn't given any public address and SAA is just being ordered to retreat without any fight. Can't blame him, for a doctor the last 10 years was exhausting and not many people will want to go through that again. If the people don't want to focus on the economy, then let them fight, at least he won't be responsible for any destruction.
The quote was from a FSA guy, the picture has nothing to do with the quote
An sunni islamist group in control of Syria will be a much bigger threat than Hezbollah for Israel. Palestinians are Sunnis too. And Sunni's have always had a much bigger brotherly feeling towards Palestine than Shite groups. Moreover, Turkey is no longer as friendly to Israel with Islamist Erdogan in power. I consider Turkey to be an anti-western trojan horse in Nato, slowly gaining power. Turkey will soon be a bigger threat to US power in the middle-east than even Iran. Turkey has rich heritage of dominating the middle east and they want to regain that dominance once again.
Assad was a classic Middle Eastern dictator who never had the charisma or cult of personality that others in the region, or even his own father, were able to exude over the population. He was Western educated and a fluent English speaker, so RT did a lot of work in recent years to build up his reputation with all those English language interviews. But the problem with propaganda is precisely, which audience are you targeting? All that PR from RT worked wonders to win Assad legions of "anti-imperialist" internet fanboys all over the world, but internet fanboys were not the ones who were going to be coming his rescue if he ever found himself in a situation like he's exactly in today.
Taking off the anti-Zionist, and anti-West tinted glass. I realized that Assad's Syria had actually been a Russian and Iranian imperial outpost in the Levant. Russia wanted to retain its last remaining Soviet-era overseas military outpost. Iran wanted to hold onto its Shia crescent from Iraq to Lebanon. There is that Israel problem, but that is for another discussion. Assad's Syria had its positive values such as tolerance for multiple ethnicities and faiths. Many anti-imperialism fanboys and Western conservatives were captivated by this image of Syria. Behind this image are the majority masses of regular Sunni Muslims, mired in poverty and oppression. These people may be oppressed, but that doesn't mean that they'll be benevolent to the minorities once they are able to take power.