How not to think about Syria

The rapid demise of the brutal Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria has taken every geopolitical analyst and self-proclaimed Middle East “expert” by storm. Following 53 years of brutal Assad family rule and 13 years of bloody civil war, the Syrian strongman abruptly fled for asylum in Moscow as rebels finalized their encircling of Damascus. In the blink of an eye, one of the two Ba’athist Arab states – along with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq before the U.S.-led 2003 invasion – was no more.

Start with the obvious...