How to get rid of Syrian dictator Bashar Al-Assad while holding on to the non-violent character of the Syrian revolution – a proposed strategy: 1. A clear objective: ending the dictatorship: As the world is drawn to the meeting of the Friends of Syria in Tunisia, it remains at a loss on what to do to end the killing. For a year now, a dominantly nonviolent popular revolution has been demanding the resignation of the dictator and his replacement by a democratic regime. It has not succeeded. As the country's death toll near the 10,000 mark, many more are in prison, and the nonviolent character of the revolution is giving way to the revolutionaries – civilians or defecting soldiers - increasingly taking up arms. As the deadlock persists, the question is how the revolution can succeed without losing its nonviolent character. It is a dilemma shared by the Syrian opposition in its most expressive manifestation, the Syrian National Council, as well as the supporters of the revolution worldwide, including millions in the Arab world and leaders and societies of the larger democracies.

The goal must be to replace the dictator. Left in place, Assad will continue to murder his own people. He will also send a signal to all others like him that the way to win is to shoot nonviolent protesters and hang on to power at all costs.

No less important is the means to end the dictatorship while honoring all the sacrifices made in the spirit of nonviolence, and the establishment with the least possible bloodletting of a new governance in Damascus. The West has inadequately noticed the depth and strength of the nonviolent movement across the Middle East – a movement with roots in Gandhi and the legacy of the civil rights movement in the US, the example of Eastern Europe in 1989 and in Serbia in 2000, but one that also has a genesis of its own in the Lebanese Cedar Revolution of 2005-6 and the Iranian Green Revolution in 2009. In fact, the Arab Spring of 2011 takes it name from the Damascus Spring, which developed considerably in Syria over ten years ago, until Bashar Assad ruthlessly destroyed it, sent his thugs to disrupt meetings, and imprisoned its leaders, many of whom had already spent years in jail under the cruel dictatorship of his father.