And what was the strategic interest of the U.S. in all this?
To the extent we have an interest in this dispute, it would be in preventing yet another Sunni Arab* (i.e. the religion and ethnicity of the folks who conducted attacks against the WTC in 1993 and 2001) regime from coming to power. However, that would mean conducting drone attacks *against* the Sunni rebels instead of intervening in their favor.