The stop-and-go evacuation of rebel fighters and civilians from Aleppo had begun again as I write this, but the reason for the last interruption was instructive. It was Jabhat Fatah al-Sham (formerly the Syrian branch of al-Qaida) that burned the buses coming to evacuate the wounded from Foah and Kefraya.
The same organization dominates the rebel forces in Aleppo, and its propaganda has worked very well. According to Western media, the city of Aleppo has not just been "destroyed"; it has been "annihilated." There has not only been a "massacre"; there has been a "genocide."
Official sources have not been much better. Last week at the U.N. Security Council, U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power compared what was happening in Aleppo to other scenes of slaughter "that define modern evil, that stain our conscience decades later ... Rwanda, Srebrenica and, now, Aleppo."