The overthrow of Assad, the Assad government, the Assad Mafia, would be a very welcome thing in Syria. ~Brit Hume

It’s safe to say that Hume has no clue what the fall of Assad’s government would mean for Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, or Turkey. In fact, no one has any clear idea exactly what would happen, but most of the likely scenarios would be quite bad for all of the countries I just mentioned. Of course, we have seen what happens when a heterogeneous state ruled by a Baathist dictatorship experiences the collapse of its regime. Robert Kaplan sums up the possible consequences:

Were central authority in Syria to substantially weaken or even break down, the regional impact would be greater than in the case of Iraq. Iraq is bordered by the strong states of Turkey and Iran in the north and east, and is separated from Saudi Arabia in the south and Syria and Jordan to the west by immense tracts of desert. Yes, the Iraq war propelled millions of refugees to those two latter countries, but the impact of Syria becoming a Levantine Yugoslavia might be even greater [bold mine-DL]. That is because of the proximity of Syria’s major population zones to Lebanon and Jordan, both of which are unstable already.

The idea that any of this would be “very welcome” for the nations that would suffer the effects of this upheaval is madness, and it is ridiculous to think that it would be “very welcome” for the U.S. As we found in Iraq, the slogan that “we pursued stability at the expense of democracy in this region here in the Middle East — and we achieved neither” sounds insufferably glib in the wake of the humanitarian disasters that result from the breakdown in real political stability. In fact, the people who use this slogan tend to go out of their way to destroy or undermine whatever stability existed in the region. Some of them will keep trying to do the same thing in Syria, and if they succeed the greatest losers will be the people of Syria and the surrounding countries.