Jordan Cuts Support for Syrian Rebels

This photo released by the Syrian official news agency SANA, shows damaged cars and a motorcycle after a bombing attack in the Rokn al-Deen neighborhood, Damascus, Syria, Monday, May 4, 2015. A small group of insurgents, including a suicide bomber, carried out the attack in Damascus on Monday targeting a Syrian military logistics and supply facility, militants and activists said. (SANA via AP)

Jordan has quit trying to tip the scales in Syria, and instead will just try to look after Jordan:

For much of Syria’s civil war, Jordan has quietly supported the rebels fighting to topple the regime. In recent months, various coalitions of rebel forces have scored major battlefield gains, seizing towns and villages from the regime in the north and south of Syria.

But far from cheering these advances, Jordan is ready to pull the plug on the rebels.

Alarmed by the strength of Islamist militants in the rebels’ ranks and their recent seizure of a critical Jordanian border crossing, officials here say their priorities have changed from unseating President Bashar al-Assad to taking the fight to jihadists, including the self-declared Islamic State.

There aren’t any good choices left to be made in Syria, other than perhaps to try and quarantine that place on the map we still think of as Syria, and let the locals fight it out until the tragic end. But even that’s no good, as the survivors would undoubtedly prove to be the most effectively violent Islamists the world has yet to see.

There just aren’t any good choices left.