The Brookings Institute Plan to Liquidate Syria

Translation: There's going to be US boots on the ground in Syria. You can bet on it. While it's okay to deploy the jihadi cannon fodder to lead the charge and "soften up" the enemy; eventually, you have to send in the A Team to seal the deal. That means special forces, a countrywide no-fly zone, forward operating bases, and a ginned-up propaganda campaign aimed at convincing the sheeple that Syria must be destroyed in order to defend US national security. All of this will unfold in Phase 2 of the Syria war fiasco which is about to intensify by many orders of magnitude.

Finally, here's O' Hanlon making one last spirited pitch for his spanking-new regime change strategy:

"This type of plan may be the only realistic path forward... Moreover, while it is not without risks for the United States, the scale of military involvement envisioned is not substantially greater than what we have been doing the last year or so in Afghanistan. President Obama... should not view Syria as a problem to hand to his successor, but rather a crisis that demands his attention and a new strategy now."

So there you have it; the plan to rip Syria to shreds, precipitate an even bigger humanitarian crisis, and topple Assad without physically removing him from office. All that carnage and destruction in one-short 1,100 word essay. How's that for brevity?

Do you ever wonder if these policy brainiacs, like O' Hanlon, ever think about the suffering they cause with their grand strategies, or does it even matter to them?