Over at the Daily Star, Michael Young (whose excellent book, The Ghosts of Martyrs Square, I reviewed for World Affairs last year), has some harsh words about the Obama administration's support for Kofi Annan's peace overtures to Bashar Assad, arguing that they are merely a delaying tactic that will keep the regime in power: 

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The truth is that it’s the Obama administration and its European partners that have adopted the Russian and Chinese perspective. When President Barack Obama says that Assad will fall, that’s empty oratory destined to keep Syria at arm’s length during an election year, and avoid accusations that the U.S. president is soft on mass murder. But Obama’s focus is elsewhere. He prefers to subcontract Syria to regional states, even to the feckless Russians, so that he can pursue America’s strategic reorientation away from the Middle East.