Bashar Assad is sending in the tanks to crack down on protesters in Syria. This ought to underscore what should have been obvious long ago: Assad, who has drawn closer to Tehran in recent years, was never the “reformer” that a delusional chorus in Washington has long claimed. Bush administration Pentagon analyst David Schenker argues in the current New Republic that it’s long past time to drop the presumption that Assad’s survival is in the US national interest; it’s frankly amazing that this argument is even particularly controversial.

President Obama never should have sent Ambassador Robert Ford to Damascus (the post had been empty for five years before Obama filled it via a recess appointment). Now that Assad’s brutality is on display, would it be too much to ask that the Obama administration consider recalling Ford in protest?