While I wouldn't want to live among the Shiites, I don't think they would be much of a threat without the 12er rule.
I’ve noticed that the latest thing is to blame Assad for ISIS. This is probably in order to enable Obama to funnel more money to the radical Islamists (and ISIS groups) that were trying to overthrow Assad.
Make no mistake, Assad is not a nice guy and has certainly caused trouble over the years. However, he’s not a Sunni and not even a Shiite, but an Allawite, which is a syncretist sect regarded as heretical or even non-Islamic by Sunni Muslims, and looked at with suspicion by Shiites. About 10-12% of the Syrian population is Allawite.
So maintaining himself in power and protecting the Allawites meant that he constantly had to defend himself and the other Allawites from the Sunnis, and since the only form of government that seems to work in the ME is dictatorship, that wasn’t a very pretty thing. It did result, however, in protection for Christians and other minorities as well, as long as they weren’t trying to overthrow Assad.
Obama seems to want to throw in his lot with the most radical of Muslims, and of course, that would be the Sunnis, so Obama’s encouragement of the Sunni attacks on Assad (during the “Arab Spring”) is the only way in which one could even remotely say that Assad had anything to do with ISIS. In other words, Obama was building up the radical Sunni elements to attack Assad.
Not really true. Both Sunnis and Shia have extremist wings, and it would be very difficult to determine which is "more extreme."
Conveniently, these radical wings hate each other, if possible, even more than they hate us.
Thanks for that good info.