That pic is quite... agenda driven; say the point about democracy is pure, thick PR paint, its a plain dictatorship with favorable treatment only for those who shut up, obey and don't complain about the shitty governance, minority or not.I don't like the Iranian regime due to its oppression of its own people but I also don't like Iran's rival Saudi Arabia due to its extremely brutal war in Yemen. So, where exactly would I myself stand in regards to this?
I also fear that removing Assad could result in something much worse than Assad himself is:
For one Assad is no Lee Kuan Yew to get away with an argument for "benevolent dictatorship", if not for many years of unchanging shitty governance with heavy leftover influence of the age of Arab socialism that was kinda shit even on a good day and only got worse with the 2008 crisis and following Arab Spring, he may have not had a civil war to begin with.
In a way that's a quite similar situation to Afghanistan. On one side you have useless corruptocrats with a thin veil of democracy, on the other you have Taliban or other religious nutjobs. Typical "both sides suck" situation.
Speaking of, Britannica has a great, subtle BTFOing of Assad's judgement of the situation.
Syrian Civil War | Facts & Timeline
Syrian Civil War, armed conflict that began in 2011 with an uprising against the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The conflict drew involvement from a number of international actors and helped precipitate the rise of ISIL (also called ISIS or Islamic State) in eastern Syria.
www.britannica.com
In January 2011, Syrian Pres. Bashar al-Assad was asked in an interview with The Wall Street Journal if he expected the wave of popular protest then sweeping through the Arab world—which had already unseated authoritarian rulers in Tunisia and Egypt—to reach Syria. Assad acknowledged that there had been economic hardships for many Syrians and that progress toward political reform had been slow and halting, but he was confident that Syria would be spared because his administration’s stance of resistance to the United States and Israel aligned with the beliefs of the Syrian people, whereas the leaders who had already fallen had carried out pro-Western foreign policy in defiance of their people’s feelings.
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