The 'Syrian center'

"... “There is a sense of surreality” to United States policy, said Ryan C. Crocker, a former ambassador to Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan and now the dean of the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University. “  ‘Assad must go.’ Well, Assad isn’t going to go.”

Mr. Crocker and others say the current approach fails to capitalize on a growing center of Syrians exhausted by the war who have lost their enthusiasm for either side and fear that Syria is becoming a failed state...."