Assad may kill you if you threaten his people, or even if you get uppity.
Daesh is engaged in revolutionary nation-building. They have more incentive to purge dissidents just to gain position. And they seem awfully concerned about a mean and vicious version of “halal” and “haram” that seems to go beyond the words of the Prophet into oppressive conformity. I’m not sure if that’s primarily about a secular end of purging the populace of potential dissenters or about superstitious piosity, and I’m not sure it matters.
I like the idea that this could somehow force Turkey to surrender territory to Kurdish nationalists, but I don’t see a path forward for that. If you’re just saying there will be a Kurdistan in territory formerly claimed by Iraq and Syria, and the Turks will sign a peace accord with them…
What? No. Historic perspective is needed. Afghanistan is the folly de jure, actually the “graveyard of empires” for many reasons Syria doesn’t even approach. Al-Assad’s government functions on mechanisms we are familiar with ( infrastructure, conventional arms, depots) and is a significant role in a power struggle playing out in spite of American cares.
Syria is just the battlefield of the middle east power struggle, it will be resolved there one way or the other.
For how long? This would just kick the can down the road a bit, and is a large part of how this whole mess happened to begin with. Brutal dictators are good at suppressing moderate dissent, and so when they inevitably fall, the extremists are what’s left to fill the vacuum.
I dunno if there’s any point. Assad has never shown the slightest willingness to step down, nor the Russians nor the Iranians to force the issue. And if he does, what then? Once again, Assad himself is not the whole problem; different rebel factions have very different visions in mind for Syria’s future, and they hate each other at least as much as they hate Assad’s regime.
There you go. Make the long-term inevitable your policy goal, and call it a win!
Seriously, I think marshmallow is right. There is no way back to being a functional country for Syria, as such.
When a country like Spain can barely hold itself together, it should be no surprise that so many of the Humpty Dumpties in the Middle East are subject to not being put back together again once they fracture. Most of them were made up countries anyway, only held together by autocratic rule.
Well, at least Kerry is pushing to get everybody to the table, and stating as a firm position that whatever ultimately comes out of this can’t include Assad. I don’t see what more he could do at this point. The USG has few good options. Boots-on-the-ground intervention would lead to a quagmire worse than Iraq. We’re bombing ISIS, and helping the Iraqi government fight ISIS, but that isn’t going to do anything to end or resolve the Syrian civil war.
It’s actually worse than that. It makes people think that what we say has no meaning since we don’t plan any follow-through. “Assad must go”, but we’re not going to do anything to make him go. Huh?
It’s simply a case of, “This has gone on long enough; Something must be done!”
We’re doing something; Therefore, no-one can accuse us of doing nothing.
Also, it makes not one damn bit of difference what we say or do with respect to what other people think. America has been saying Fidel Castro must go for better than 50 years. Made not one damn bit of difference one way or the other with respect to America’s world standing. Syria has been irrelevant on the world stage for quite some time now and it will continue to remain so for some time to come. (Human suffering notwithstanding.)