- Edit 1Before modification by Joel at 30/08/2013 01:15:41 AM
When Assad was just massacring people who wanted a less authoritarian government (I never felt they were going to build a real, functioning democracy but they have the right to try to anyway), I think it would have been helpful. Support for Assad was nebulous because the Iranians hadn't really thought long about whether or not they would lose their link to Hezbollah.
Back then, a bombing campaign would have worked. With the West's failure to act, however, the rebels have been taken over by al-Nusra and the new group, Jabhat Tahrir, as well as other smaller Salafist groups. Of the groups, Jabhat Tahrir seems to be the least threatening, at least for the present time, but its links with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and its intolerance to non-Sunnis are problematic for any long-term solution in Syria.
Obama, as usual, is great at making speeches and nothing else. The single positive achievement of his Presidency, the killing of bin Laden, was urged by Clinton and Gates, and it was only after cancelling the operation once that Obama finally consented to it. I suspect that if the current foreign policy team had been in place then, we never would have done it because of the diplomatic consequences with Pakistan. Obama is even walking back his more or less effective drone strategy in the face of Leftist opposition.
Having said all of that, the US reputation is now on the line, for better or worse. The best option at this point is to go in heavy - drop more ordnance on Syria than was used since World War II, and do it with as much force as possible in the first 48 hours. Destroy all power for the capital, all television outlets, all palaces, carpet bomb front lines for the Assad forces, drop fuel-air bombs on every military base and about ten daisy cutters onto the Damascus airport and the port at Latakia (we would still have to avoid the Russian base, though, if we didn't want a diplomatic incident). Make sure that after a week, the Assad-controlled areas are devastated, and then let the rebels fight for control after that.
It would be the only way to send a message to the Iranians that we mean business.
Obviously I have been out of the country a while now, but most complaints I hear about drones are from the Paul-Buchanan wing of the GOP/Libertarian Parties, which is hardly "leftist." Rand Paul, of course, engaged in an extended "talking filibuster" (which phrase ought to be redundant) against drones and tagged out with another Republican senator at least once; I am aware of no Democratic or independent senators ever joining them. A while back Fox (again, hardly a leftist outfit) was running stories claiming the EPAs unmanned monitoring of air quality over US pasture was a prelude to Predator drone strikes against Tea Party ranchers.
That is not to say guys like Kucinich do not protest drones as they do pretty much any military action by anyone for any reason, but they appear to be the minority of drone critics. Most people I hear complain about drones are either Paulites equally opposed to any US military action for any reason and dyed-in-the-wool Republicans who condemn anything and everything Obama does without even bothering to learn what it actually IS. Not that, er, I know anyone like that.... 
I am unconvinced Syrias situation is any crappier now than last year or last century. It is a pity Reagan did not go after Assads dad as you suggest Obama do, instead of cravenly pulling all US forces from Lebanon after the Marine barracks bombing. That, arming the Ayatollah in exchange for hostages (and the presidency, of course) and comparing bin Laden to George Washington while calling his men freedom fighters were the biggest ever green light for anti-US terror. When the US president completely withdraws from a country in response to the greatest single combat loss of US Marines since Iwo Jima, what can terrorists NOT do to the US with impunity...?
Anyway, yeah, Obama has rhetorically painted himself into a corner, and yeah, he is lamentably skilled a that, but I find it difficult to believe there were many "Young Syrians" to remove Assads control of Syria without promptly handing it to the Muslim Brotherhood. It is a more extreme form of the problem that spawned the Muslim Brotherhood in the first place: Like Nasser, Sadat and Mubarak, Assad IS the secular power in Syria, and the choice across the Mideast invariably appears confined to either secular military or fundamentalist clerical dictators. The adjectives are polar, but the noun is constant, so it is six of on and half a dozen of the other in terms of democracy and human rights. Nothing suggests Sryia is uniquely different in that regard; everything suggests it is quite typical, but more extreme.