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"I kept seeing turning points. First the uprising. Then the creation of the Free Syrian Army, the FSA. Now a big assassination bombing in the heart of Assad's government. But the turn never came. It just got worse and worse."
This is how US correspondent Richard Engel (And Then All Hell Broke Loose: Two Decades in the Middle East) described covering Syria during the Arab Spring back in 2011.
I worked alongside Engel during that brief period of Middle Eastern hope.
What started in Tunisia spread into Egypt and Libya; people rising against repressive regimes.
One by one they fell: President Ben Ali in Tunisia, Libya's Gaddafi, and Mubarak in Egypt.
But I kept hearing the same thing over and over: Syria is the big one.
Protests had begun, the same cries for democracy and freedom.
President Bashar al-Assad responded by killing hundreds of demonstrators. People were locked up, the media locked out.
I reported from inside Jordan and up on the Syrian border.
We relied on video posted online by people inside Syria. We spoke on the phone and pieced together the best picture we could of the unfolding crisis.
The US vacates, Russia fills the void
Assad knew the price of survival. He was schooled in brutality by his father from whom he inherited power.
Hafez Al Assad had faced uprising in 1982 and ordered a military crackdown. The exact death toll is still unknown; estimates have put it as high as 40,000.
Fast forward to 2017 and Bashar al-Assad is still in power.
He has defied the West and rebels armed against him. He has crossed red lines turning chemical weapons on his own people.
Then US President Barack Obama talked about retaliating but did nothing. It is a stain on the Obama legacy.
His critics say he badly misread the Middle East crisis. They say he rushed to pull out of Iraq; he underestimated — in fact laughed off — the rise of Islamic State. He squandered American prestige and power.
It is Russia that has filled the void.
President Vladimir Putin has been unconstrained; he has been accused of ordering bombing raids that have killed civilians. He has armed the Syrian military, with Assad reportedly using Russian helicopters to drop barrel-bombs on people in the town of Homs.
Russia has emboldened Assad.
Putin has used his veto on the UN Security Council to block resolutions condemning the Syrian government and has stifled sanctions against the Assad regime.
What now?
Syria is a hornet's nest.
On one side is a ruthless leader who has gassed his people but to whom minorities — his own Alawite sect of Islam, Christians — look to for protection.
On the other, a grab bag of militant groups — as many as a thousand different groups — including Al Qaeda offshoot, Jabhat Fateh Al-Sham (formerly Al Nusra Front).
Of course in the middle of this is Islamic State.
As Tony Abbott said with what now looks like prescient simplicity: it is baddies versus baddies.
This is the dilemma facing President Trump.
If Obama was guilty of not acting, Trump now has to own the consequences of his actions.
We are now in the territory of unintended consequences. Will Assad strike back hard against his own people? Will Russia double down on its support for the Syrian government? What will this mean for the big regional powers: Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia?
What does Trump do next? Does he up the ante, increase his military action?
The best hope is that the US military strike spurs a political solution, prompts Assad back to the table for negotiations on what ultimately will be a Syria carved up among the various parties.
Of course, it could all just empower the one group everyone agrees should be removed: IS.
Journalist Mark Engel has spent his career covering the Middle East, and he keeps looking for a turn, but "it just got worse and worse".
Topics: unrest-conflict-and-war, world-politics, syrian-arab-republic, united-states
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