which appears to hope that syria s president assad will negotiate his own departure, seems utterly doomed. instead, america, the western world, indeed, the civilized world should attempt to dislodge the assad regime. but is there a smart way to do it? for a number of reasons military intervention is unlikely to work well in syria. unlike in, say, libya, syria is not a vast country with huge stretches of land where rebels can retreat, hide, and be resupplied. syria is roughly one-tenth the size of libya, but with three times as many people. perhaps for this reason the syrian rebels have not been able to take control of any significant part of that country. the geopolitics of military intervention are also unattractive. in egypt and even in libya all major regional powers, world powers were on the side of dislodging the regime or at least passively accepting that it would happen. in syria that s not the case. iran and russia have both maintained strong ties to the assad regime,