Some advise me to keep Assad supporters as Facebook friends in hopes they might be persuaded. That could work if you think of war as a talking point in world politics & Syrians as an abstraction. But that kind of detachment is too antisocial.

Evangelism among supporters of dictatorship & carpet bombing is better left to mental health professionals with the stomach & who get paid enough to cope with irrationality, conspiracy theories, & sucking up to power.

Dragging confused people around hoping to undo their attraction to barbarism is not the best use of time & psychic energy when there are so many men & women of good will who want to understand Syria.