In the past four and a half years, nearly 300,000 Syrians have been killed in a conflict largely waged by opposing evils against a civilian population. Some eight million Syrians have been displaced with about half fleeing that ravaged country. Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey have been pushed to the near breaking point in accommodating refugees. And Europe is crumbling under the weight of many hundreds of thousands of desperate people in search of even tiny measures of safety and security.

In this clash of villains, Syrian President Bashar al Assad has unleashed his military with genocidal ferocity employing chemical weapons and barrel bombs designed to kill, maim and terrorize. The Islamic State, al-Qaida, al Nusra and many other jihadi terrorist groups have acted if not in kind certainly with equivalent brutality. The Kurds have been deeply engaged. And the recent intervention of Vladimir Putin with increased Russian military forces and equipment to reinforce Assad, paralleled by Iran's support of Damascus, adds a new and dangerous dimension to any strategic calculations.

President Barack Obama's credibility and strategy regarding Syria have been grievously wounded. Declaring a " red line" against Assad's use of chemical weapons and demanding "Assad must go" were hollow threats. In August 2013, Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron's agreement for air strikes against Assad was soundly rejected by Parliament and the White House was unwilling to act alone.

In a disastrous Senate hearing last week, the Armed Services Committee demolished the administration strategy in Syria verbally flaying alive the rosy testimony offered by the two witnesses, General Lloyd Austin, the head of Central Command, responsible for the region, and Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Christine Wormouth. While committee chairman Senator John McCain did not call their testimony delusional, to any on-looker, that was not an unfair conclusion. Among the more shocking revelations was the concession that the half a billion dollars appropriated to train 3,500 Syrian fighters produced only fifty-four who were killed or captured almost immediately by al Nusra. General Austin later testified that only four or five trained Syrian fighters remained.

The tragedy is that there is no single and maybe no solution for Syria. Direct military intervention would require hundreds of thousands of ground and air forces to control the country. A decades long occupation would be needed to sustain order. The Iraq War demonstrated the weakness of that argument. And what states would offer troops to a hopeless cause? The answer is none.

Establishing a safe zone in some remote part of Syria likewise would require substantial numbers of ground and air forces to protect these camps that would still be vulnerable to terrorist and missile attacks. With Russian forces now operating in larger numbers, the possibility of a military engagement, accidental or not, would be heightened. And it is fair to worry that safe zones could lead to further escalation and engagement.

Late last week, Secretary of Defense Ash Carter spoke to his Russian counterpart on Syria. Secretary of State John Kerry implicitly suggested that, while IS and Assad were equivalent dangers, a transition in government might occur over time as the violence subsided. Of course, a reversal by the Obama administration on Assad's leaving would immediately be seized by Republicans to discredit White House credibility and used as further ammunition against the nuclear agreement with Iran.

What can be done? First, any solution to the Syrian crises involves many parties. Assad, the Islamic State, the myriad Sunni jihadist terror groups and the Syrian Kurds must be engaged. Russia, Iran, the region's border states and the EU likewise have equities. Resolution cannot be seen as only an Assad and IS matter. And the overly optimistic estimates of the Obama administration in the fight against IS must be tempered with a severe dose of realty.

The grim truth is that Syria reflects the dangers of the 21st century. Terrorism and religiously inspired violence will continue to have hugely disruptive effects, some predictable, others not. Hence, the causes of this terror must be attacked, not the symptoms. In Iraq, for example, the de-Baathification law must be repealed to reduce the Shia-Sunni divide. In Syria, merely defeating IS or removing Assad may be necessary. Neither is sufficient for a lasting solution.

Perhaps the coming UN General Assembly meeting in New York later this month could be a forum for an international conference on Syria. But that requires a sophisticated understanding of a very complicated array of factors. Whether any administration is capable of creating and executing a strategy on that basis is the haunting question.

___________________________________________________________

Harlan Ullman is UPI's Arnaud de Borchgrave Distinguished Columnist; Chairman of the Killowen Group that advises leaders of government and business; and Senior Advisor at both Washington D.C.'s Atlantic Council and Business Executives for National Security. His latest book is A Handful of Bullets: How the Murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand Still Menaces the Peace.