An almost simultaneous and nearly identical pattern events in Libya and Syria. The peaceful protests lasted for less than two weeks before the battle for Daraa started on 04/08/11

Same chain of events happened, virtually simultaneously in Benghazi. The pattern in both countries, focused on these two cities, was broadly as follows:

Week One: The Twitter Factor - exile groups promote “Days of Rage.” Largely ignored.
Week Two: Demonstrations grow, calls for overthrow of regime. A few serious casualties.
Week Three: Militants shoot at police and demonstrators during riots, Police/Army overrreact, massacres.
Week Four, and thereafter: Mob Anger, Storming of Gov't buildings, arsenals looted, troops attacked, foreign fighters and al Qaeda carry out bombings, civil war.
Coverage of events by “liberal” western media fixates on Week Three: PR for Islamic Revolution and "humanitarian intervention."

During the period of the first Daraa uprising, the estimates for the number of opposition killed range from 50-220 (with 81 defected soldiers killed), while government casualties are reported to be killed 25 killed and 177 wounded. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April%E2%80%93May_2011_Daraa_siege


There was a common pattern of insurgency. Riots and violence leading up to regime change follow a well understood dynamic of mass mobilization, provocation, overreaction and de-legitimization. Libya and Syria followed the same pattern of engineered insurrection, almost simultaneously, and the US had an identifiable substantial role in "spurring" events in both countries.

There is no question that the US and other western countries facilitated Libyan and Syrian opposition groups in exile, which produced the twin "Days of Rage" pronouncements that served as a "spur" to the mass demonstrations that errupted shortly thereafter in both countries. This "mass mobilization" phase is part of a well-understood and documented insurgency and counter-insurgency literature that underlies the theory and practice of regime change.

Once mobs are called out into the streets in urban centers of targeted countries, it is merely a matter of provoking the often undertrained and ill-equipped municipal authorities and paramilitary auxillaries into the use of a degree of lethal excessive force that deligitimizes the regime. One description of that dynamic is described here, See, e.g., J. Sullivan and A. Elkus, The Strategic Challenge of Riots Riot Action and Crowd Power, Small Wars Journal (Feb. 13, 2012):

Journal Article | February 13, 2012 http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/the-strategic-challenge-of-riots