Should Bashar al-Assad Remain in Power in Syria?

[Redalgo]

No, of course not, and either way the path ahead becomes bleaker as the civil war trudges on. If Assad wins the violence to subdue disloyal elements of the population and re-consolidate power would probably be horrific, and if he loses the risk of having extremists of Islamist bent ascend to power grows the longer Western powers decline to intervene seriously - with idealistic foreign fighters (and terrorist organizations looking to exploit the situation) flowing in from elsewhere in the region and displacing relatively moderate Syrian groups as the main bastion of oppositional force.