America is not prepared for Syria after Assad

On Saturday afternoon, US intelligence officials leaked an assessment: the Assad regime, which has ruled Syria for over half a century, could very well collapse in a manner of days. As one official told CNN, ‘Probably by next weekend the Assad regime will have lost any semblance of power.’

It turns out that Washington was giving Assad too much credit. Less than eight hours later, a regime that had locked up hundreds of thousands of prisoners in dudgeons across the country, and used chemical weapons against its own people on multiple occasions to keep itself in power, was burning up and heading for the ash heap of history. The Syrian army gave up; its soldiers discarded their uniforms; Damascus fell without a fight; Bashar al-Assad took a plane to Moscow to save his skin; and the victorious rebels, suddenly thrust into power, were attempting to manage a peaceful political transition.