Antonio Guterres took office as the ninth U.N. secretary-general on Jan. 1 and Donald Trump takes office as the 45th U.S. president on the 20th. A major international crisis and humanitarian tragedy they inherit is the Syrian War.
Self-defined progressive liberals deny any responsibility for enabling the rise of Trump by imposing their moral frameworks of social policy on an increasingly resentful populace until the deplorables rose up in revolt to upend politics as we have known it.
Neoconservative cheerleaders of the Iraq War disclaim any responsibility for the spike in international terrorism that is yet to abate with the ensuing region-wide destabilization. The folly was compounded by going after the only two other secular dictators in the Mideast in Libya and Syria. The resulting catastrophe and humanitarian disasters in Iraq, Libya and Syria are there for all to see.