Is U.S.-Russia Deal on Syria 'Obscene'?

Brookings' Shadi Hamid is one of the smartest Middle East analysts alive and I find myself convinced by pretty much everything he says. So it's no surprise that he has given probably the clearest exposition of the sense, shared by many critics of the U.S.-Russian deal on Syria's chemical weapons, that the pact represents an "obscene" trade: a license for President Bashar al-Assad to continue slaughtering his people, as long as he gives up chemical weapons that are marginal to his war effort.

I understand the feeling and it is compelling, not least because you have to suspect (as Syria's rebels and their allies, Turkey and Saudi Arabia certainly do), that any deal Assad would accept is good for him and bad for them. They also suspect, correctly, that President Obama is signing up just to get out of missile strikes he never wanted to launch, rather than to end the war.