Back on September 20 (so, a full ten days before a three star Russian general strolled into the US Embassy in Baghdad to let the US know that airstrikes in Syria “start in 1 hour”), we said that the US strategy in Syria had officially unraveled.
At the time, John Kerry had just concluded a meeting with British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond in London. "For the last year and a half we have said Assad has to go, but how long and what the modality is, that's a decision that has to be made in the context of the Geneva process and negotiation,” Kerry told reporters after the meeting. "It doesn't have to be on day one or month one [and] there is a process by which all the parties have to come together and reach an understanding of how this can best be achieved."
“That this a far, far cry from the hardline rhetoric the US was still clinging to just months ago,” we said, adding that “it marks a tacit recognition of what should have been obvious from the very beginning: the US backed effort to assist Qatar and the Saudis in destabilizing the Assad regime was doomed from the start.”
