Anne Applebaum: U.S. is
behind the curve on Syria"In every instance, the timing is wrong. The moment to throw support behind “peaceful activists” was right at the beginning, before most of them were killed or imprisoned. The moment to train fighters was soon after that, before the fighters were radicalized by years of violence and the assistance they’ve ­received from Islamic extremists...With the United States on the sidelines, no one else seems able to create a “coalition of the willing” to engage, lethally or non-lethally, in helping to end the Syrian conflict.
It’s odd: After the end of the Cold War, some thought we’d live in a unipolar world. Others thought we’d live in a multipolar world. Instead, we now live in a nonpolar world — and it’s every bit as stifling as a bad week in a Washington summer."