That body's weighing in was only to be expected. It is not clear Mr. Escobar is not engaging in some spin of his own, certainly. Fights on this scale remain highly susceptible to outside influence, and the response to this may simply be increased flow of arms to the rebels. Routs will be found.

The sort of thing I read after I wrote it and decide it's not quite ready. But some interesting bits and confirmation of things that have only been inferred.

Quite right, like dominoes falling. I am already reading the yells of triumph, bleats of outrage, and calls to action. And they say that karma stuff means nothing. A couple of months ago they might have been able to negotiate something, if they would have been willing to give up on the Assad has to go idea and stick to getting a negotiated cease fire. The question is who will next decide to take the plunge into this debacle and what they will try to do?

It is not so clear from the map this isolates rebel areas as much Mr. Escobar seems to think.

All of the parties will fight to the death, genocide will not be allowed, and only a fool would try to occupy and directly govern a well-armed and unwilling subject people. Assad will not get his kingdom back either.

It would be extremely sensible to partition Iraq, for example, and while there is a degree of de facto parting of the ways, there is no formal division, nor much prospect of it, even though a good deal of blood has, and will be, spilled. Yugoslavia is something of a special case in the present period, as its various constituents had mostly been separate sovereign jurisdictions before the amalgam was formed. Partition got a pretty bad name between '46 and '48, to put it mildly. And it should not be blinked that, as a practical matter, partition tends to partake of genocide, certainly of the milder form we are wont now top call 'ethnic cleansing'. That was once sanctioned, imposed as law, even, by the League of Nations, in the Lusanne treaty, of course, but still --- just not done, not now.

I don't see a lot of sensible going on anyway.

The desire to rule over others seems to be nigh irresistable, for some reason.

Your comments about partition are well stated, and it is clear that Rodney King had it right ("Can't we all just get along?&quot , but I think in Syria we are at a point where its bad either way, the ethnic cleansing is already happening and there will be a bloodbath if either side wins absolutely, and so you have to consider how to minimize the damage.

There are local precedents....

From the point of view of the 'hamstring Iran' motive, continued chaos is nearly as good as an outright over-throw.

It seems clear that Russia, Iran, Iraq, and Hezbollah have all jumped in, and decided that Assad will not fall and there will be no islamist Sunni state where Syria now is, no matter how much we think we want it. And pending further large comitments of assets from outside that should be enough to take back the entire territory. Of course that will not be allowed to happen either.

Meanwhile Erdogan seems to have made Morsi's mistake, so he is busy.

Some really strange bedfellows in this one too, I'm sure Israel would prefer not to have an islamist Sunni state where Syria now is too.

I consider this whole thing the first step in a campaign against Iran. Iran's 'don't tread on me' is the capability of loosing Hezbollah on Israel, which in turn requires a regime in Syria friendly to both Hezbollah and Iran. To break this linkage leaves Iran with only action against the oil trade as a retaliatory capability if it is attacked over the nuclear program. That is a phantom capability, as it would turn just about everyone against Iran, on sheer 'bad for business' grounds.

And of course the whole thing is taking place in context of a grand scale sectarian war in west and central Asia, deep into its 'Bleeding Kansas' stage already, which we largely kicked off ourselves by knocking out the keystone at Baghdad.

Turkey is getting interesting. I wonder if the Army is not going to take back its traditional role in Ataturk's state.....

No real offensive capability. Irans interest, aside from religion, is the deterrent, yes. Therefore, it would be foolish to attempt to use Hezbollah aggressively, they would just soon be gone and not soon replaced. I think Nasrallah knows that, but he will be pressured.

"Bleeding Kansas" is a good analogy Sir, the early development of the culture medium for total war. And yes, thank you SOOOO MUCH neocons.

You might be right about the Turkish Army there, I hadn't thought about that, but that could happen.

Iran's threat is to provide Hezbollah with long range munitions in quantity. Attack the centrifuges; rockets will be fired: that is the deterrent.

Mr. Erdogan has struck directly at the Army, and a number of high and retired officers are at present up on charges and looking at serious jail time. Pressing a thing like this is a very tricky business.

Your analysis is quite correct. It is not hard to see.

Yes, he picked the fight, and it was not a necessary fight, and I think it's going to cost him, and it could well get very messy. He has overplayed his hand. It directly lowered my opinion of him when he did that, and it was part of a long series of ham-handed acts. It started around the time he decided to dump on Assad and push the religious angle or the Mavi Marmara thing. I think he started getting ideas or someone is feeding his ego.

I recognize a number of old standards, including 'it is a given of warfare that an attacking force will almost inevitably take higher casualties than the defenders', often trotted out when someone has taken a bloody drubbing. I have been re-reading Mr. Horne's 'Price of Glory' recently, which suggests the true given is that the side with the heavier weapons inflicts the most casualties....

Still, it will be interesting to see the tabulation of funerals from the Hezbollah centers.

The article also seems to suggest a possible program of action against Shia in Lebanon as a counter to Hezbollah participation. That should be taken seriously; the fanatics to do it are available.

Couple different news sources.

Yep, "vendettas for fifty years" I read around here somewhere today, much easier to start the fire than to tamp it down.

Beirut owned by Hezbollah?

Among the casualties is the working fiction that Lebanon and Syria are separate states.

At least I saw some fear-mongering about Hezbollah on the Syrian border etc.

But I consider that to be unrealistic.

and Iran.

Now would be a golden time for Israel to cut a deal with the Sunni Muslim world as well as Palestine. But, Bibi . . .

In fact that is central to my complaints about politicians and their meddling, you ought to be very cautious in starting things up when you don't know how to stop them.

I think watchful waiting is probably a better option for Israel right now. Nobody ever thinks of just doing nothing for the moment, but it is rare that it is not the best option.

it seems to me that all Israel does w/r/t the Palestinians is do nothing, and it is most certainly not the best option.

The schism in the Arab world between Sunni and Shiite is at its sharpest since any time I can remember (of course, it goes back a few centuries, so it's probably been worse), and it would seem that taking advantage of that would be a good idea.

Israel has 4 big foreign threats/problems (somewhat interrelated):

1) illegitimacy because of the occupation
2) Hezbollah
3) Iran
4) surrounded by hostile Arab states

It could make all 4 better with decisive and wise action now. Which means they won't.

Mainly that the Sunni autocrats might not last long in office if they did that, they are not comfortable on their thrones as it is. That is part of why they cannot let Assad "win". If the Shiite crescent fully forms they will be in deep shit (they have large Shiia minorities) and their supporters will not be happy. Contrariwise, since the Sunni autocrats are the guys supporting the war against Assad, to make a deal with them is to make a deal with Assad's enemies, and they HATE Israel, and having them on the Golan border is probably worse than having Assad win from an Israeli point of view, esp. if they get their hands on his WMD. So I think the Sunni bigshots are sort of stuck in the middle.

at this point.

If the Shiite crescent forms, all the more reason to have detente with the region's sole military superpower.

One doesn't have to cut a deal with the Sunni jihadis on the ground in Syria, who are dead men walking anyways. Cut a deal with their sponsors and financiers. (they're not a match for a few Hezbollah brigades, let alone the IDF).

will do the wrong thing. Very rarely disappointed.

Ms. Meir used to have a joke that Moses led the Jews for forty years to find the only place in the region where there was no oil, but however the Shia fetched up where they are now found, someone must have had a nose for the stuff....

"And all we get is a couple stone tablets?"