My summary, or my largest take-away, would be that I don't think you can deal with the ISIL threat without dealing with a settlement in Syria, and a viable settlement in Syria has to have at its end the exit of the Assad and Makhlouf families from Syria and the leadership of Syria.
How you get there, the process that's involved, what's involved to induce that, is the subject of the debate. The longer that those individuals stay, I think the longer that Syria will be partitioned. The longer it's partitioned, the more these ungoverned spaces will generate extremism and extremists who make the world a less safe place, not only for Syrians, Iraqis, people in the region, but also those of us in Europe, Canada, and the United States as well.
