The dissension of fifty-one State Department underlings seeking military intervention in Syria shows a distressing dependence on force rather than persuasion by our diplomatic corps. It’s a notion blind to the elements in place to partition the country and thereby defuse the sectarian irreconcilability of the belligerents, something bombs can not do. If State is hampered by the thought of Syria’s sovereignty then consider it a state that has ceased to function and thereby has no sovereign. Syria could logically split into three parts, an Alawite Shiite region to the west above Lebanon on the Mediterranean Sea, a Kurdish partition in the northeast and the remainder to the southeast for Sunni Arabs to self organize and settle. The first step for State would be to negotiate with Russia, whose primary motive in Syria is to protect its naval base on the Mediterranean, to isolate and protect their client Bashar al-Assad in his Alawite enclave by that very same base. Iran may be persuaded that al-Assad doesn’t have the political muscle to bring back under his control the rebellious Sunni Arab regions of Syria so that his attempt to do so is hopeless and that they would be better served to consolidate with their Shiite brethren in the Alawite region as well. Diplomatic success in getting al-Assad to back off and retreat to his enclave would allow the recent ceasefire to work, certainly it’s more logical than lobbing in a few bombs at great humanitarian cost that settles nothing as long as Bashar remains in Damascus.