Ten years ago this week, tens of thousands of Syrians took to the streets to protest against a reviled dictator. Bashar Assad’s security forces responded violently, shooting down unarmed demonstrators without a second thought. Mass arrests followed. In Washington, there was a frenzied anticipation that Assad’s demise was a preordained conclusion. “Look, Assad’s going to be gone,” then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton confidently stated in June 2011.”[I]t’s just a question of time.”

Bashar Assad was never supposed to be the man who inherited power from Hafez al Assad, the family patriarch. That job was meant for Bashar’s older brother, Bassel, who was groomed to take over once the father died or retired. Bassel, however, died in a car wreck in 1994, forcing Bashar to step up and carry the family business on his shoulders. Whether it was his wimpish demeanor, his ophthalmologist schooling in the West, or the fact that he married Asma, a stylish, British-born investment banker, a faint hope hovered in U.S. foreign policy circles that Bashar would turn Syria in a more reformist direction. Before Assad was known as the world’s most notorious war criminal, Nancy Pelosi and John Kerry flew to Damascus to meet with him, entertaining the idea that he was a Syrian dictator waiting to become a reformer.