Still food for thought.
Option 1 is "more of the same." We don't like that. It's just more protracted warfare in which a lot of people die. Status quo. While it's possible there'll be a sudden unified push to take out Assad, it's not something I think is likely, either. (There--somebody'll say I'm on Hayden's side, and therefore a Bush/Cheney support, because we both agree on something that's butt-obvious.)
Option 2 is having the state and therefore the borders unravel. Not likely on the N, E, or S. Don't really care about Lebanon, to be honest, but neocolonialist France won't let that happen. Neocolonialism is cool now that it's wrapped in the right flag (old colonialism was cool, too, when it was wrapped in the right flag.)
If France does get involved, then there's the question of how. Will it impose the sort-of secularist National Syrian group, and help it win power? Will it allow for a partition of the country so that the Xians, Alawites, Sunnis, modernists can all coexist in their own geographical and political spaces? (This was sort of the Lebanese solution that France had long ago, in you recall.) Or will France go for the sadistic Bosnian solution, forcing everybody to live in a small commonwealth for the sake of a single group that couldn't be viable if alone, but saying that it's because everybody will, dammit, get along and be thankful for it because that's what we think is the way humans are meant to live (5000 years of human history saying pretty much the opposite).
Option 3 is having Assad reassert control. It was okay in 2007-8, it seems, and only really became a problem for many when there was something "we" thought we had that Assad would be taking away, a government that we approved of set up by the protest movement from 2-3 years ago. (Granted, opposition to Assad grew when it stopped being a sine qua non of domestic US politics; the same happened in Europe, for the same reasons--it was no longer necessary to oppose certain players in US politics. This coming from a person who wanted the old Assad gone, saw the eye-doctor ungroomed son as little better and who wanted him gone about 2 minutes after he was in charge, and who still wants him gone.)
Other options:
--Islamists win.
--Suicide attack takes out Assad and, to avoid an Islamist win, the Alawite/Xian/pro-Assad groups manage to make friends with the slightly secular Sunni non-extremists and join forces against the Islamists.
--And my favorite, slightly secular Sunni non-extremists swallow their pride and make peace with Assad for an interim government that might not guarantee them power but might lead to a better, if not perfect, future.
Then again, I have a hunch "my favorite" would be a bandaid on a very, very large boil--it might be okay and fade away, but odds are it'll wait a bit and then erupt.
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