In Syria the blood continues to flow, civilians continue to die and the tears keep falling.

This week, a hospital was bombed. Doctors were killed, the building was reduced to rubble, and nearby Syrians were left -- in the middle of a war -- with little access to medical care.
Displaced Syrian children living in a camp near the Turkish border.
Displaced Syrian children living in a camp near the Turkish border.
Syria, a jewel of a country on the eastern end of the Mediterranean, remains convulsed by war, eating itself from within. It is smaller than 17 of the 50 American states, yet it commands the attention of diplomats the world over.
The tide of refugees from the country is threatening to overwhelm the European Union and crush its treasured system of open borders between most member countries.
And after more than five years of civil war, President Bashar al-Assad -- propped up in part by Russian air support -- still clings to power. His enemies remain implacable, and a negotiated solution seems hard to envision.
A truce negotiated in February among some of the groups fighting in Syria now "hangs by a thread," a U.N. official said this week -- and that is putting it generously. It appears to be collapsing.