PrintMay 16, 2013
Syria: A Case of Humpty Dumpty
Syria today is a nation-state that is in the midst of a terrible civil war in which some 82,0001 of her citizens have died in the last twenty-eight months. Although the Sunni rebels have made impressive gains and bloodied the regime of Bashir al-Assad in significant ways, the regime, with the aid of its allies, has shown itself to be pugnacious and resilient in its response to the rebellion. After almost two and a half years of fighting, the situation looks to be stalemated.
The question confronting the West, and the United States in particular, is what to do next. President Obama has mentioned "red lines" around the question of the use of chemical weapons, but such lines are proving to be somewhat fuzzier than originally anticipated -- especially since it appears that the rebels recently may have used sarin gas in the north. The Assad regime has played it very coyly, escalating slowly and testing each incremental increase in its use of WMD. But the...(Read Full Article)
