Well, of course he’s a genocidal dictator. Everybody in the ME is. That’s they only way they hold onto power.
The Saudis do not have our best interests at heart, except insofar as they coincide. I’m not sure they even coincide in this case, but we’ve decided to do the will of the Saudis.
We can’t forget that Obama consistently takes the Sunni side in any conflict. That doesn’t mean the Shiites are better (they’re not, obviously; look at Iran) but it does mean that there are forces here that have nothing to do with US interests.
Assad is an Alawite, which is a splinter sect, and this is the reason that he has been fairly tolerant of Christians and other minorities, although the country seems to have large numbers of both Sunni and Shiites in it.
In any case, remember when Bush wanted to go into Syria and the Dems got hysterical because they said that the fact that Assad was clearly hiding Saddam’s chemical weapons was no justification for our intervention? Ah, how times have changed.
Alawites are of the apocalyptic “Twelver” school of Shiite Islam which is waiting for the Imam Mahdi to come and conquer the world for Islam. They believe that Jesus will come back and convert to Islam and lead the Christians to follow the Mahdi.