Plan on Libya or Yemen 2.0--a multi-factional continuation of civil war. It's already started with the assault on Syria's Kurdish area.

Syria makes Yugoslavia's ethno-confessional mosaic look simple. And there's no history in the region of these conflicts getting resolved through compromise and negotiation.

HTS will make nice and the right noises in English for western useful idiots' consumption to get aid while they're weak. They'll follow the well-trodden path of the PLO, being statesmanlike and promising pluralism in English for a western audience while promising quite the opposite to their Sunni Islamist rank and file in Arabic. Of course, the Alawites, Druze, Christians and Kurds in Syria already know this. It's also why Israel is demolishing what's left of Syrian military capacity while it can.

Also the ethnic and confessional factions in Lebanon are in the midst of rearming to take on Hizbullah.

Of course, I hope to be wrong and would be very happy if HTS added its signature to the Abraham Accords. But the authoritarian kleptocratic outcome of the Arab Spring tells us I won't be. Rule of law democracy is impossible without secularization, which is inconceivable in an Arab world incapable of separating state from a religion that mandates building the state as an Ummah (community of believers).

The authoritarian bedrock of the American South is also proof that secularization is the premise of rule of law democracy.