After nearly half a million Syrian deaths and the uprooting of roughly 11 million people, the horror and obscenity reached a kind of crescendo last week when Aleppo, Syria's last rebel stronghold, finally imploded in a mayhem of atrocities and war crimes. Aleppo fell under the weight of a starvation siege, Russian jet fighters, Hezbollah militiamen, Iranian Quds Force thugs and Bashar Al-Assad's barrel bombers.

Savagery triumphed, but even against the abject humiliation of the United Nations and the pathetic, bawling impotence of the United States of America, one must keep up appearances. There are comforting delusions to attend to, and quite a few of us appear to be hysterically possessed of a desperate need to be told there was absolutely nothing we could have done to stop it.

Terry Glavin: It's not just Aleppo we've murdered. It's truth