The Geneva II conference has yet to convene — indeed, it may never convene — but the failure of the “outsiders” to organize coherently in anticipation of the conference has clarified a number of important if uncomfortable realities.

The Baath Party has wielded power for more than half a century in Syria for reasons more complex and legitimate than many are prepared to credit. It emerged as pre-eminent as a consequence of the strengths and weaknesses displayed by its local and regional competitors. The shortcomings of the opposition today, and not principally on the battlefield, suggest a similar, powerful rationale for its continuing claim to exercise power.

From the beginning of the revolt against Syria's ruling Baath regime two years ago, the international community outside the Arab world has always preferred the narrative it has imposed on the crisis — democratizing rebels acting against a tyrant in the most selfless spirit of the Arab Spring — to the far messier and less laudatory reality. It has built a policy based on these misapprehensions, awarding to Assad's opponents a greater degree of coherence and standing at the United Nations General Assembly, and in US and EU policy, than the Syrians are able to manage themselves, both within their own councils and with the Syrian public.

US views on Syria have long been infused with an air of high-minded unreality and wishful thinking: aspirational rather than policy- and operationally-oriented. The Obama administration established and endorsed the gold standard — Assad's departure — and engineered the international legitimacy of exiles without internalizing the commitment required to achieve its maximalist objectives. It describes the merry-go-round of opposition leaders as “presidents” and “prime ministers” to the point of parody. It is not clear who policymakers think they are fooling by investing Assad's opponents with this ersatz pedigree … other than perhaps themselves. You can call a tomato an apple all day long, but if it is really an apple you're inviting disappointment. It won't taste the way you expect it to; that in short is the West's experience with the opposition.