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I think the full truth is hard to find in Syria, where I think there are no “white hats” at all, just different interests vying for power by military arms, and Assad is no “good guy” but neither is hardly any armed faction against him. I think there is guilt all around when it comes to civilian deaths by either direct means or as intentiobnally neglected collatteral damage.

The biggest guilt in the west is in my view NOT that the west did not go in with guns blazing to remove Assad, but that even before much public recognition of a “Syrian opposition” movement, in fact long before the “Arab Spring”, the west was parters with that “Syrian opposition” in its own intially covert and later overt regime change agenda.

Why? The only seriously well organized groups with the most support on the ground, and either armed or ready to be armed to oppose Assad were the Muslim Fandamentalist groups led by or acting in conert with the Syrian wing of the Muslim Brotherhood. If the west had done what those groups wanted, and ousted Assad as they ousted Khaddafi, those groups would have ascended to a majority of any ruling coalition that followed Assad.

The western powers have to admit that either they totally failed to understand that or that they were willing to accept it. That means they were either willfully neglectful of our own interests, or that they intentionally operated against our interests.

The result - both Iran and Russia have much stronger presence in the eastern Mediterranean than before Syria was destabilized. We went from a security situation with Assad that was stable and contained, to a security situation now made more difficult and complex with greater risks and concerns regarding Iranian and Russian influence and actions.

Regime change against Assad was a joint enterprise with a number of western and Middle East interests, including the U.S. Dim and GOP elites - through three administrations, and it should be marked in history as one of the all time western blunders.