Re: Wrong question
Well nuclear bombs clearly aren't an option in this case. I consider what the US did in Vietnam far beyond taking to gloves off; it killed around 2mn people and dropped vastly more bombs than were dropped in the entire second world war. The tactics you seem to be referring to talking about are close to simply killing vast swathes of the population (opening the dam etc). That might work in the short run, but it could result in then having to kill the entire Arab population of the world, followed by the entire Muslim population of the world, probably followed by a global nuclear holocaust. At any rate it is far beyond what most people would consider remotely within the bounds of acceptability.
My understanding of what happened in Hama was that it was a simmering hotpot of discontent that exploded into a riot tha tthe Syrians put down brutally. It wasn't a long-standing conflict and it didn;t have much support outside of the city, which as you say they had to almost completely flatten to quell. The equivalent would be flattening the West Bank. Of course you can ultimately quell insurgencies by resorting to such tactics, but not only are they inhuman, they demand endless repressive measures afterwards to stop them from boiling over again. Basically they demand you turn into an Saddam-style state. I don;t think that would do the region very much good.
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