Rebels armed with rocket-propelled grenades attacked tank positions in the eastern sector of the city of Deir al-Zor on the Euphrates river, in response to an army offensive against several towns and villages in the province that have killed tens of people in recent days, they said.
If the resistance to Assad continues, he may have to consider cutting his losses in the non-Alawite areas and nearby core regions of Syria in order to simply survive. Yet the allure of holding oil resources in distant parts of Syria may well persuade Assad to try to hold it all until it is too late.
Playing whack-a-mole just buys time. It can work. Back during the Iraq fighting, I noted that we cleared and hold where we could, played whack-a-mole with our own ground troops where we couldn't clear and hold, and hit insurgents with air strikes where we couldn't raid with ground forces. In the short run this bought time until we had enough Iraqi troops to clear and hold everywhere. Fortunately the Awakening provided those Iraqi forces faster than the expansion of the Iraqi army and police would have provided them--and greatly reduced resistance, of course.
The problem is that Assad has no reasonable hope that his own resources will increase enough to advance from whack-a-mole to control. He simply buys time hoping resistance will peter out on its own. It might. But that's all Assad can do.
Unfortunately, we do little to deprive Assad of the time it will take to see if he can outlast the resistance.
But at least Assad is spreading himself out trying to have it all. Blind ambition may yet outweigh our president's determination to avoid foreign problems at all costs.
