By Daily Star Editorial  

Arab leaders once liked to propagate the notion that they were in control of any situation. They claimed that actions they ordained would produce the desired effect, usually prolonging their grip on power.
Such choices used to be taken under the comfort blanket of a subservient populace and effective intimidation. But that was then.
One thing recent uprisings have shown is that the image of the Arab people as a docile and subservient race is being consigned to the footnotes of a post-colonial segment of history.

The changes sweeping the region may have caught Arab dictators off-guard (as they did other world leaders) but anyone with the most basic knowledge of the Middle East must recall that it was once, before the age of the autocrat, at the vanguard of advocating democracy and freedom.
Granted, such a noble torch has flickered low over the centuries, however 2011 proves that the fire burned all along, albeit under the scattered ash of prolonged tyranny.

And still Syria refuses to draw from even recent experience. The regime has demonstrated – on the contrary to truisms gleaned from similar uprisings – its relentless predilection to quell protest by force. Do that for long enough and you get the events of Monday, when state television reported an armed ripost against brutal security forces.
Had it learned from the events in Tunisia and Egypt, Syria may have been able to seriously address protestors’ demands early enough to avoid making its own position untenable.

With more than 1000 demonstrators dead, thousands more wounded and even more still leaving the country, that ship has plainly sailed. When talk of civil war goes from sensational to sensible, the situation has reached breaking point.

Every day that passes and every additional civilian that falls in the name of freedom heaps further domestic pressure on President Bashar Assad.
Now, with the international community poised to ratchet up action against Damascus, Syria is entering undocumented territory.

The world has given Assad more than enough wiggle room to prove it wrong and implement reform; sanctions and political pressure now seem like the only options the global community has left to avoid rightful allegations of double standards when it comes to dealing with Arab uprising.
But the action must be carefully considered and not give the regime any additional pretext to continue killing its own people.

The time for prevarication, as it did for former presidents Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali and Hosni Mubarak, has passed. Damascus must know by now that the dilemma it faces is no longer between reform and repression: it is a choice between the people’s democracy and its own destruction.