What this potentially amounts to is the end of pluralism in the Levant and its replacement by supremacism: An ethno-supremacist Greater Israel and a religio-supremacist Salafist Greater Syria.
Three years before it intervened in Syria, Russia feared an Islamist takeover in Damascus would lead to widespread chaos in the region, like a new Afghanistan in the Levant, reported Joe Lauria in 2012.
The Assad family regime, sustained by force, was destined to collapse and the infighting between the various armed militias now may produce a situation not unlike Afghanistan.
Maybe you would prefer to believe a plucky band of heroic freedom fighters bravely overthrew an evil supervillain dictator all on their own like some Hollywood movie, says Caitlin Johnstone.
Speaking from Beirut in this video on Sunday, the former British diplomat explains the fall of Damascus within the context of the project for Greater Israel.
John Wight says the common denominator behind the rise of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia in the 1970s and Salafi-jihadism in our time, is Western foreign policy.
Events during the Obama administration probably point to the way things will work out again, if the attack on Syrian forces continues for more than a few weeks.