Over the course of Syria’s 13-year old civil conflict, President Bashar al-Assad has resorted to torture, mass slaughter, and chemical attacks on his own people. Some 500,000 Syrians have been killed and 18 million are homeless out of a prewar population of 21 million. Even so, Assad was recently welcomed back into the Arab League, per the national interests of his Arab neighbors. What will this development mean for Syrians and for the region–and how should the US respond?