more and more like the final fall of

Aleppo. The regime of Bashar al-Assad,

Russia, Iran, and they're affiliated

militia are the ones responsible for

what the UN called a complete meltdown

of humanity. The battle for Aleppo is over

"Are you truly incapable of shame is

there literally nothing that can shame you?"

Aleppo has fallen. The city, formerly

the most populous place in Syria, was the

site of a major battle between Bashar al

Assad government and rebel forces.

The rebels control the eastern half of the

city and Assad the West.

The story of Syria's Civil War is a

story of flip-flops. Early on it looked

like the Assad regime was finished,

intervention by Iran and support by

Russia help prop them up. Then the rebels

backed by Saudi Arabia and Qatar and

several other sides turned the tides and

this happened a number of different

times inside the conflict.

September 2015 was a turning point in the Syrian

civil war. That's when Russia intervened

directly for the first time.

Russian airstrikes began pounding rebels

under the cover of hitting ISIS. Russian

airstrikes played a decisive role in

allowing Assad to encircle Aleppo. The

bombardment made it very difficult for

rebels to operate freely allowing Assad

to move towards Aleppo and eventually

encircle the city.

A siege is a military tactic where forces on one side

surround the other side, including any

civilians trapped in there and deny

supplies from entering the city. There is

a grim logic to imposing a siege on Aleppo.

If you deny the rebels' food and medicine

eventually they lose the physical and

mental capability to fight. Assad's vicious

siege worked as intended. The rebels

collapsed allowing Assad forces with

Iranian and Russian backing to stream

into eastern Aleppo. Almost immediately

reports of massacres started filtering

out of civilians being killed on the

streets of women committing suicide to

avoid being raped by Assad's forces.

It's hard to know how many were killed in

this initial purge. We do know

shortly after the siege was broken an

evacuation agreement was struck allowing

again an unknown number of civilians to

escape into other territory mostly to

the city of Idlib, still in rebel hands.

The United States had the military power

to break the siege of Aleppo and prevent

the city from falling but doing so would

have been extremely dangerous.

For one thing the United States would

have needed to have coordinated with

rebels on the ground, some of whom were

extremists. For another it would mean

that American planes would have been

flying in hostile airspace with Russian

planes. If the United States were to

engage Russian planes that would mean a

direct exchange of fire between two

nuclear-armed powers a risk that very

few in Washington were willing to take.

Third,

even if the US had temporarily broken

the siege of Aleppo and prevented it from

falling it would have required a

tremendous an open-ended commitment to

prevent Assad from simply reimposing the

siege after Americans left. Whether or

not you think an American intervention

would have been worth the risks

there's no way to save Aleppo now. The

city has fallen and Assad's troops have

gone and committed untold atrocities

with who knows how many more left to go.

The rebels have been dealt a devastating

blow one it's not clear they can

recover from. This victory for Assad

has been achieved with the support of

two major international powers Russia

and Iran and it has involved atrocities

that are supposed to be prevented under international law. They fought

horrifically and they won that's the

lesson of Aleppo.