Assad both vanish overnight , it would be fantasy to imagine that Syrians will simply acquiesce to a status quo ante once the shooting stops . The Syrian population could once have been described as varied and diverse , but is now thoroughly divided , antagonistic , mistrustful and convinced that the national government is malign .
This description is hardly limited to Syria alone , but could be applied to nearly every country currently in crisis worldwide , including ( still ) Iraq . Libya is currently divided between four competing governments , all based around differing tribal alliances , and facing a growing ISIS presence . Yemen ’ s civil conflict remains unresolved , with local populations and the international community divided over support for the government in exile , a Saudi coalition that has become an actor within the conflict rather than a peacekeeping intervener , and an ongoing insurgency . Each of these cases are worsened by the perception that international actors are ambivalent , prioritizing their own interests , or using the conflict as a proxy war .
Discussion of the Iraq mission here is not meant to suggest that it should serve as a template for future interventions , nor is it intended as another in a lengthening list of post-mortem analyses . The US mission in Iraq was unique in American history , in its scale , design and execution as well as in the ideological and political assumptions that drove it . Many of the building blocks fundamental to that design — ideas such as state-building , which will be discussed later in this monograph — are fading from American planning in no small part because of the failures of that mission ,
2