"A problem from Hell!"

"... But Syria is, to borrow a phrase from White House advisor Samantha Power, a problem from hell -- a brutal state with a fragile ethnosectarian makeup that straddles the region's most dangerous fault lines, from the Sunni-Shiite divide to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Unlike Libya, Syria matters in regional geopolitics, and nobody has any illusions that Assad will go down easily...
The international community has not been silent. Obama reacted quickly and angrily ... William Hague demanded on Monday, Aug. 1, that the U.N. Security Council issue a resolution to "condemn this violence,..",Even Russia finally spoke out against its ally ...
A Security Council resolution, as Hague himself acknowledged, seems unlikely: Beijing and Moscow have resisted all attempts to take meaningful action against Assad, citing the Libya precedent. The United States has been pushing -- aggressively, the administration insists -- for a resolution condemning the crackdown, but has run into opposition not only from veto holders China and Russia but also from temporary council members Brazil, India, Lebanon, and South Africa. Attempts to refer Syrian officials to the International Criminal Court would run into the same roadblock because the Security Council would have to do the referring....
"I have no doubt that the dynamics on the ground will embarrass those standing in the way," says Salman Shaikh, head of the Brookings Doha Center and a former U.N. official in the Levant. Shaikh argues for a hard push at the Security Council to hold an escalating swath of Syrian officials accountable for the slaughter. "I don't see how else we're going to get these people to take notice," he says. Shaikh also advocates putting together an informal "contact group" of concerned countries -- as with Libya -- with a core group perhaps consisting of the United States, France, Qatar, and Turkey. But the all-important Turks, who share a border with Syria and have hosted thousands of refugees and several opposition meetings, are still hedging their bets...(Turks, unlike the Qataris and the Qatari-funded hords, are not in the 'Dial-A-Coup-d'Etat' business!)

The European Union's position comes across as similarly cautious, the product of an institution that operates by consensus. "The only way out of this crisis is through a genuine inclusive national dialogue with the opposition," EU foreign-policy chief Catherine Ashton said Sunday. The European Union did announce fresh sanctions on Monday, with asset freezes and travel bans on five additional Syrian officials, but harsher measures that Tabler (WINEP/AIPAC) argues could really damage the regime -- targeting the oil and gas revenues that help keep the Syrian government afloat -- are so far off the table...
Syrians aren't holding their collective breath. "We can't really expect much from the international community," says Jabri, and most Syrians are wary of external involvement in their struggle...(and yet,) New meetings are being planned both within Syria and abroad, possibly in Egypt and Saudi Arabia...
But few analysts think words will do much to damage the deeply entrenched Syrian regime, and some, like the Century Foundation's Michael Hanna, worry that Assad could limp on far longer than anyone expects...Washington has made its decision, though nobody can say when Assad will go. "He's on his way out," (Exact same words were used by George Schultz to describe the Assad-pere regime to a Lebanese Ambassador in 1983!)..."