Aleppo: Time to begin the healing

The beginning of the end of the siege of Aleppo proceeds with inexcusable agony for residents of what was Syria’s largest city.

US President Barack Obama, at a press conference Dec. 16, said that although as president he “always feel[s] responsible,” the blame for the “brutality” in Aleppo rests “in one place alone — with the Assad regime and its allies Russia and Iran. And this blood and these atrocities are on their hands.” Obama, who is regularly and often unfairly skewered by critics for his "failure" in Syria, explained that “unless we were all in and willing to take over Syria, we were going to have problems. … I understand the impulse to want to do something. But ultimately, what I’ve had to do is to think about what can we sustain, what is realistic.” In referencing his approach to pursue a diplomatic solution, which he continues to believe is “the right approach,” Obama said, “I cannot claim that we have been successful.”

Obama might have cast a wider net in assigning blame to include those regional powers who have allowed, or even facilitated, the rise of the Islamic State (IS) and Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria, all in the name of deposing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Jabhat al-Nusra, which changed its name to Jabhat Fatah al-Sham, is now the largest al-Qaeda affiliate ever thanks to the support of some US regional allies, as none other than US Vice President Joe Biden explained two years ago.