coupl'a stray thoughts:
I doubt that Bashar Hafez al-Assad is quite the bogyman that western propaganda would have us believe.
I'm inclined to agree.
He's certainly a dictator. He can be brutal when he believes his regime is threatened. You wouldn't want to find yourself in one of his prisons. He's favored members of his Alawite sect for higher government and military positions, which Syria's Sunni majority resents.
But the loose talk about how he's 'killed hundreds of thousands of his own people' is foolish in my opinion. Those people died in the Syrian civil war. He didn't start it and he isn't responsible for all the deaths that happen in a war that others forced on him.
It's true that his military has bombed civilian areas pretty indiscriminately. But those were civilian areas in which rebel forces were sheltering and from which they were attacking Syrian forces. One of the things this war has revealed is that the Syrian air force is not very good at close air support. That's one reason why the Russian air force has begun helping them, bringing a precision air attack capability to the battle.
In Assad's behalf, it can be said that he's relatively secular in the sense that his government didn't try to impose Islamic rule. His regime has always been tolerant of religious minorities, which isn't surprising since he's a member of one. Christians (about 10% of Syria's population) only come under attack when Islamist rebels seize their neighborhoods. The Druze generally support Assad.
When we helped topple the leaders of Libya and Iraq, more death and chaos ensued. ...And continues still........
Why would anyone expect a different/better result this time?
One thing that events in Iraq and Libya, Egypt and Yemen should have taught us, is the danger of power-vacuums in that part of the world. Dictators aren't the worst things that can happen in those countries. Overthrowing dictators can open the door to things that are even worse. Countries can unravel into failed states, into all-against-all anarchy. And those most ready to step into Western-created vacuums are usually the radical Islamists.
We were wrong once, then wrong again, but surely this time will be different!
What's that old saying about insanity? Doing the same disfunctional thing over and over again, in expectation that things will turn out differently this last time?
Either really stupid, or really Machiavellian?
The "Arab spring" is poking up through the seat cushion and becoming a real pain in the ass.
Western leaders are blinded by their own wishful thinking, by their own dreamy idealism.
George W. Bush overthrew Saddam Hussein in the expectation that the Iraqi people wanted liberty and democracy, and that they would welcome US troops as liberators. He expected that free elections could be set up in a matter of months and US troops would be home within a year. And he believed that a new progressive and free Iraq would serve as a beacon to the whole Middle East, with oppressive regimes toppling left and right, much as communism collapsed in 1990.
Instead he created a power-vacuum in which Iraqis looted everything in sight and set about brutally settling scores, dividing on sectarian and ethnic lines.
The left's opinion-leaders excoriated Bush for that unrealistic idealism and called him an 'idiot'.
Then came the so-called 'Arab Spring'. A bunch of young people in the Middle East took to social media and staged some large demonstrations, and somehow convinced Western leaders that there was a progressive modernist majority in these countries that wanted democratic change.
So Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton along with a coterie of dreamy unrealistic Europeans helped engineer the overthrow of Muammar Qaddhafi, in expectation that there was a progressive opposition ready to take his place. And just as we saw in Iraq, Libya fell apart. Libya became a failed state without a central government, ruled by a collection of unsavory militias, in some cases radical Islamist.
When crowds appeared in the streets of Cairo, Barack Obama again let his idealism get the better of him, abandoning Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak. Not only did this open the door to the Muslim Brotherhood, it also had a destabilizing effect on American alliances throughout the Middle East. Mubarak had been a key US ally for many years and now he was thrown under the bus. The Saudis and many others started to reassess the wisdom of basing their own regimes' security around their alliances with the United States. Subsequently the Egyptian military staged a coup, overthrowing the Muslim Brotherhood, and this time the US didn't object.
In Yemen once again, a longtime pro-Western dictator was overthrown by an 'Arab Spring' uprising cheered on by the West. The result this time was another failed state and the country being torn apart by Sunni-Shia conflict.
And now the Obama administration, many foolish Republicans and the always-dreamy European leaders tell us that the only way to bring peace and progress to Syria, and the only way to confront ISIS, is by overthrowing Syria's dictator Bashir Assad.
Never mind that the only military force on ISIS' western flank with a hope of confronting ISIS on the ground is the Syrian army. Never mind that by attacking the Syrian army instead of ISIS, the Syrian rebels are effectively behaving as ISIS allies.
And never mind that nobody has even the slightest clue what will fill the vacuum and take Assad's place after he is finally gone. The so-called 'Free Syrian Army', trained and equipped by the US? At this point, a year after it was so grandly announced, it's virtually non-existent. How in the world is it going to hold off much stronger rebel groups like the Nusra Front (al Qaida in Syria) or Jaish al Islam (Army of Islam) which fights to impose Shariah and to rid Syria of all non-Sunnis? And what would prevent ISIS from taking advantage of the vacuum and seizing Damascus?
It's just stupidity. The only one displaying any realism regarding any of this at the moment seems to be Vladimir Putin.
