Even as he fights to hold on to power, Syrian President Bashar Assad has agreed to destroy a significant part of his arsenal and to join negotiations whose stated aim is to remove him from his post.
Those seemingly contradictory moves may point to a shrewd strategy: negotiate, play for time and hold the West at bay while his troops wear down an increasingly divided and dysfunctional rebel force on the battlefield no matter the cost.
So far the strategy has been working.
These things are not contradictory as anyone who has listened to those critical of our Syria policy could have told them since last September when the deal was made.
Ahem. Who couldn't see it is a ploy?
And by "wear down" the writer means 'slaughter civilians into dazed passivity." That's who is paying the cost that doesn't matter to Assad.
For our reporter class, this is major progress. So I should not mock.
