Bret Stephens: Damascus Needs Regime Change

[Mr. Stephens writes the Journal's "Global View" column on foreign affairs.]

It's coming on close to four decades since the U.S. foreign policy establishment got into the business of making excuses for the Assad regime in Syria. Maybe it's time to stop.

The excuses come in many forms. Hillary Clinton, citing the testimony of congressional leaders who have met with Bashar Assad, calls the Syrian president a "reformer." In the National Interest, former CIA official Paul Pillar writes that "there is underestimation of how much worthwhile business could be conducted with the incumbent [Assad] regime, however distasteful it may be." On PBS's NewsHour, Flynt Leverett of the New America Foundation says that Mr. Assad "can probably marshal at least 50% of the society . . . [who are] looking to him primarily to demonstrate that he can hold this together and keep [Syria] from turning into post-Saddam Iraq or civil war in Lebanon."

Those are just some of the recent commentaries, offered even as the regime slaughters scores of peaceful protesters in its streets. They arrive on top of years worth of true belief that Damascus wants a peace deal with Jerusalem (if only the stiff-necks would take one); or that it is a stabilizing force in the region (or could be if its "legitimate needs" are met); or that it has been a valuable ally in the war on terror (ill-used by the Bush administration); or that, bad as the regime is, whatever comes after it would probably be worse.

Today this fellow-traveling seems a bit distasteful. But the important point is that it has always been absurd...