…Four years ago in the Weekly Standard, Middle East specialist Jonathan Spyer wrote the following: “The rebel forces in Aleppo consist of a large number of independently constituted battalions, each gathered around a particular neighborhood and a particular commander. There are many non-Islamist fighters and commanders among the rebels. But the best organized and the only with a clear vision of Syria beyond Assad in the crucial Aleppo front are the Islamists.”

Yes, there were reports at that time of hundreds of independent groups of guys with guns, self-proclaimed rebels all, but with zero cooperation between them. No unified command.

In Colonial America in the 1770s, when people felt they were being abused by London, they began, in the 13 colonies, coming together as never before by establishing what they called Committees of Correspondence to cooperate. The poor treatment produced a continental identity that had not existed in 150 years. That is why their first major congress was called the first Continental Congress that also led eventually to creating an army led by General Washington, and the rest is history.

Now, class, compare national identity in the Arab-Muslim states and ponder the fate of Syria with its 400,000-plus deaths and still climbing, the results of their eternal fraternal warfare. These are not Arabs and Muslims dying at the hands of “racist, fascist, imperialist Christian Crusaders and Zionists” but one another…