The Savage Wars of Peace
There are only three possible outcomes of the ongoing civil war within the Syrian Arab Republic, which began as a revolt against the Assad dynasty's Ba'athist regime in the midst of the broader Arab Spring: Bashar al-Assad & the Ba'ath Party remain in power, the post-Assad regime of Syria is friendly toward the United States & our allies, or the post-Assad regime of Syria is hostile toward the United States & our allies. The first possibility, that Assad the younger will weather the storm & remain in power, is undesirable for at least four reasons. One, Syria under the Assad dynasty has always been an enemy of the United States & our closest ally in the region, Israel. Two, Syria under the Assad dynasty is known to possess weapons of mass destruction in the form of chemical weapons & as recently as 2007 was pursuing a secret nuclear program. Three, President Obama has called for President Assad to be removed from power, which would understandably sour relations betwixt our two nations should Assad stubbornly refuse to bow to Mr. Obama's will. Four, the Assad regime is being militarily supported by Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite militia & proxy of Iran. A Ba'athist-Hezbollah would endanger the tenuous peace in Lebanon & embolden an already bellicose Iran.

Syria under a post-Assad regime that is friendly toward the United States is the most desirable of the outomes, but also the least likely to occur. Why? Because in a revolution it is typically the most ruthless & the best organized, not the best intentioned, who carry the day. (See: the French Revolution & the Reign of Terror, the Bolshevik hijacking of the Russian revolution in 1917, & the ayatollahs' hijacking of the Iranian revolution in 1979.) The acceptable Syrian opposition, the kind invited to self-important international conferences & diplomatic receptions, is not being armed by its Western patrons, being instead provisioned with food, medical supplies, & communications capabilities. There are recent reports of defections from the "Free Syrian Army" to the various jihadist factions, groups that are armed by certain parties within the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia & the allied Gulf emirates.

Syria under a post-Assad regime that is hostile toward the United States is the least desirable of the three possible outcomes, if for no other reason than at least a continued Assad regime would be the devil we know. The unacceptable Syrian opposition is composed of all the usual jihadist suspects, including both indigenous Syrian jihadists & the ubiquitous "foreign fighters." The largest of these groups, the so-called al-Nursa Front, pledges its allegiance to Ayman al-Zawahiri, the current nominal leader of al-Qaeda, & is closely lined with the Islamic State of Iraq, the reconstitution of the former al-Qaeda in Iraq (A.Q.I.) that so bedeviled our erstwhile reconstruction efforts. In the last day or so, a video has surfaced of a Syrian rebel eating the heart of a slain regime soldier. The worst case scenario is that Assad regime's weapons of mass destruction could fall into the hands of Salafist jihadis. Contrary to the boasting & crowing of President Obama & Vice President Biden, neither al-Qaeda nor the broader jihadist strain of Salafism died with Osama bin Laden.

Those are the three possible outcomes of the Syrian civil war. What are we, the United States, doing to prevent either of the two undesirable outcomes, especially the disastous scenario of a jihadist takeover of Syria? If we do not shape events, we will be shaped by events.