Set Your Expectations Low in Syria

A brief note tonight on the Corner, for I spent most of this incredibly newsy day translating the Carnival of Fools from my brain to the page like Al Swearingen passing a kidney stone on Deadwood. (I would provide a link to the scene, but you’re better off without one.)

After a half century of tyranny, the Assad regime in Syria has suddenly collapsed completely. Assad and his family have fled to Russia, the Baathist terror regime has fallen, and rebel militias led by the Turkish-backed Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) have seized control of the nation — always more of a geographical expression than a coherent set of boundary lines — and its major population centers in Aleppo, Homs, and the capital of Damascus.