Helen, I'm not sure he will lose power, at least not by overt western attacks in any case. I think the current US administration knows it would not get away with the usual regime change dressed up as "toppling a brutal dictator" nonsense, especially with Russia, Iran and china on the sidelines. It's just amazing how often we are fed this bullshit and either fall for it, our opinions are ignored or there's just an apathetic response (mainly because we're all just getting on with our daily lives).

No doubt Isis, Jaish al- Islam and other religious fanatical groups will try their best to provoke international responses as they would benefit most in the short term - however, I hope the US etc just stay out of it.

We are allied to brutal regimes now, and have always been in the past so, sadly, it's nothing really to do with human rights when we "intervene", it's always about geo-political and economical gains. Unfortunately, it usually tends to go wrong, as we've seen in Central/South America, South east Asia and the Middle East many times - not just in the particular area either...we created Isis and flooded Europe with a million refugees last time out. Look at the terror attacks since throughout Europe.

Again, during the election campaign, Trump said many times he would be changing foreign policy and ensure the US became far less interventionalist and more inwardly focused. That's why I think Assad will stay in power - the recent missle strikes
just show there's no appetite to get entrenched in another middle eastern conflict...if we wanted to stop a "monster", a few missles striking chemical research facilities would never have had any effect....we all know he won the war with conventional arms and a fairly brutal regime.

We should be nowhere near these countries and only ever become involved through international consensus...