The Unraveling

 How Obama’s Syria policy fell apart

 I'm not entirely sure about all of Michael Weiss' story - the idea that the FSA has vanished seems a bit exaggerated - but he's generally on the button, and this comment by Flying Rodent reminded me how blind FR and his like Indecent Leftists have been in their beliefs about Syria, that it is a civil war and that any aid to the rebels constitutes an Iraq War re-enactment society being the top two. 

 "This guy seems to believe that it's Barack Obama's job to halt civil wars in Syria, for some unfathomable reason"*

 He'd made this comment about the "usual suspects" a little earlier, more of the bullshit that any aid to the Syrian fighters is a bombing campaign.

 "Just Syria, as far as I can tell. Coincidentally, a few of them have always wanted to bomb Syria, for varying reasons."**
*[https://twitter.com/flying_rodent/status/419087518328307712]
**[https://twitter.com/flying_rodent/status/419173110063976448]

The Syrian Double Revolution and
the Euro-Leftist Double Impotency

Leil-Zahra Mortada
"Here is your proof, signed with detention reports and kidnapping news. Here is the list of names for your revolutionary talent show. Here is your revolutionaries denouncing and criticizing both Assad and the religious fundamentalists. Here are the people who you claimed over and over do not exist, the attacks they are now suffering took them into a whole new level of attention. You can no longer hide in your weakness claiming there is no one to talk to and no one to work with. Not that this lame excuse ever stood ground! Even if this was not a revolution, even if this was “just a civil war”, there is still much to do. Even if this was “just a Syrian issue”, something “for them to work out”, there is still much to do. Syrians are at the borders of Europe. Syrians are dragging their injured and waiting with bleeding bodies at the borders of Europe. The last phrase is not an attempt at a poetic sentence."

Syria: genocide by international consensus

'The United States can continue posing as a supporter of the Syrian people; Israel is satisfied that "their man in Damascus" is still in place; Russia can continue arming Assad and today appears to have stood up to the United States, when in reality there is little difference between the positions of these two nations on the Syrian issue; and Iran can continue to participate actively in Assad's sectarian war while pretending that it is standing up to the United States and Israel. The anti-war campaigners are in ignorant bliss because they believe that they have stopped a war on Syria, not knowing or caring that Syrians are still enduring the most horrific war since the genocide in Rwanda. The only losers are the Syrian people.'

The Unlikely Revolutionaries

Asharq Al-Awsat takes a look at the remarkable stories of some of Syria’s activists, charting their journeys from ordinary young people to journalists, soldiers and revolutionaries

“The Syrian people’s fear of the regime and its military aircraft has forced them to stay silent about the massacres that affect them.” This has hindered field journalism, he says, and has fostered a lack of trust regarding those reporting what is happening. “Some people think they are being exploited in order for their stories to be sold to international news agencies for a lot of money.”
Abu Ghazi never dreamed of writing or of using a camera, but “the scenes of murder, blood and injustice in every corner of Hama forced me to confront the regime, which has no mercy for its people.” He sees that the time has come for Syrians to break what he calls the “barrier of fear” and the “wall of silence,” which have now lasted 40 years.
“Three years [have passed] and work continues to topple the regime relentlessly—but it’s tougher for those directly involved than for those on the outside.”

Syria: talking about a revolution"We have a popular revolution in Syria and this has been the case for nearly 3 years. Yes, the difficulties and threats to the Syrian Revolution have expanded and multiplied, and this from outside and inside. From the outside the Great powers, whether the so called Friends of Syria in the West and in the Middle East or the allied of the Assad regime (Russia, Iran and China), have continuously tried to impose on the Syrian revolutionary masses a political agreement that would maintain the Assad regime as it is."

Syrians dream of returning home in 2014 at Jordan's Zaatari refugee camp

"First and foremost, we hope to be able to return to our country and to be rid of Bashar the tyrant."
The first is dependent on the second. The world's largest refugee camp has only existed for a year and a half, the longer Syrians go unhelped in their struggle against Assad, the more refugees there will be.

Frozen Seas

 "With no predator to threaten them now, they can take their time."

Syria: What does the Media mean by "rebel held areas?"

 I don't always do this, often using the common terminology in the media, but is impossible to understand what is going on in Syria if you don't see that it is a revolution against a despot.

 'They call their city a liberated area, because they have removed the regime controls on the ground and are free to organize things the way the local community desires. The regime calls it a "rebel held area" implying that an invading army of foreign jhadists has taken over the city at gun point and the NATO mainstream media agrees because you will never hear them refer to any liberated areas in Syria, they are always "rebel held areas" that need to be brought back under control. The last thing the chiefs of NATO want to see, even in Syria, is autonomous communities running their own affairs. So they spend this fiction of "rebel held areas" which then in turn, allows Bashar al-Assad to blame the wholesale bombing of "rebel held areas" on the "rebels" who are using the otherwise loyal citizens as "human shields." '

Free Syrian Army's loss may have been diplomacy's gain – Malcolm Rifkind

The key words are, "Syria is a hellhole", and diplomacy is the international community's way of allowing Assad to make it worse.
This is obvious to everyone not on the Left:
"I don't think anyone remotely believed that the consequence of the British decision was that Obama would say he had to go to Congress to seek endorsement for a strike. If you were being logical it was the exact opposite of what he should have thought. What we demonstrated is that if you go to parliament you may not get the answer you want. That opens up the question: what answer did Obama want?"
The final pessimism fits in with a desire not to help the rebels, but to be seen to have tried to do so.
"If the international community had given more practical help to the moderate Syrian forces then the extremists could have been kept at bay. But I regret to say it is probably now too late, and that is a fact that is difficult to ignore."

Syria Op-Ed: Why Assad and Hezbollah Are in Trouble

"The Syrian regime in April was facing defeat with a steady stream of losses among personnel, territory, and resources and a threatened loss of control over the vital Damascus-to-Homs highway.

The Iranians and Hezbollah did not take half-measures, committing a significant portion of the Lebanese organization’s troop strength to the war. What they expected was quick and overwhelming victory. What they got was a Vietnam-like quagmire, sapping Hezbollah of thousands of its fighters and top echelon commanders.

The extent to which Hezbollah and its partners among Iraqi Shia militias have had to be used, as the vanguard of military operations on behalf of the regime, points to a seriously atrophied and ailing Syrian military. It’s “Weekend at Bernie’s” in Damascus, with Hezbollah propping up Assad’s military power. Should they pull out, the President will face quick collapse.

Recent compilation of slain Hezbollah fighters are in the hundreds, and a full casualty count is likely to be much higher. Their significant losses of manpower losses in the recent battles in Qalamoun and Damacus Rif and their trouble sustaining momentum around Safira and southeastern Aleppo Province point to a force that may still be motivated but is unable to advance."

The Syrian regime wants to crush us; the killing of Dr Abbas Khan is an example of how it is trying to achieve this

 "The purpose of this is to subjugate Syrians and force them back into the embrace of the regime and of the dictatorship and corruption which the Assad regime represents, after a revolution in which Syrians demanded freedom, democracy, justice and equality."

Dispelling the lie that Assad is ‘winning’

Ben Allinson-Davies
"He may be holding out for now, but he is by no means 'winning’. How long this will go on for is uncertain, but it could be for some time yet, if foreign powers continue to dither, instead of providing sufficient help to the Free Syrian Army. "