A time comes in the course of deadly upheavals when the world wearies of the slaughter and the bloodshed turns routine.
Words lose their shock value, and all that matters will have been said. Syrian President Bashar Assad had bet it would unfold that way; from the beginning of this struggle, he warned one and all in his country that the foreign cavalry will not show up, that the promises of help will not materialize. The world is feckless, despots know, and all they need to do is to hunker down and wait out the initial moment of outrage.
Indeed, Bashar had the better coalition on his side. The friends of the Syrian regime — the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon, the Iranians, the Russians and to some extent the sectarian Shiite government in Baghdad — enabled the dictator to hold on and reverse the course of battle. Meanwhile, the Western democracies, the Sunni Arab states and Turkey have run out the clock on the Syrian people.
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