That is pretty naive
What do you propose? Sending our troops into another war? We don’t have the resources or the troops to do that. Your remark is pretty naive.
I have long thought that the naïve were those who wanted to support unknown terrorist groups against Assad. Americans stopped Obama from going into Syria against Assad....the famous red line in the sand. I was one of those who disagreed with supporting the unknown to get rid of the known.
The result: Christians in Syria, formerly protected to some degree, are now refugees. They are the lucky ones. The others are dead, their women kidnapped, and their civilization destroyed.
IIRC, they were an orthodox people. Putin could even claim to be entering to protect the orthodox.
“That is pretty naive”
Maybe not.
Nobody in Syria like the US. Helping Assad does not really further US interest other than he is better than ISIL.
Besides why should Russia better more successful in Syria than they were in Afghanistan?
Why is it naive? What we’re doing now is not working. Continuing to do it is just nuts. Russia won’t tolerate ISIS and will destroy them. The official US policy is that Assad needs to go, but we also don’t like ISIS and conduct very limited military action against them. So do we just demolish the entire country?
What about ISIS in northern/central Iraq and the Shi’ite government’s warmth towards Iran which is rapidly going nuclear—also part of our national policy?
Are we getting involved for oil? There’s not that much oil in Iraq. For Saudi Arabia and Kuwait’s oil? We have far more recoverable oil inside our borders than they do.
Are we protecting “freedom”? For whom? These Islamic countries are among the least free countries on Earth regardless of how much money or blood we spend, and, from what I’ve personally seen, the people don’t seem to mind it. Our national policy on that is that “hey, it’s just their culture” (see the child rape in Afghanistan for evidence).
Is it to protect Israel? Our national policy seems to be that we don’t much care for them. Even if we did, we don’t need to go against Russia to protect them.
What exactly is our vital interest in that region?
I think what Trump said is the only thing we can do. This entire situation came about because of Obama’s actions. He made Assad weak enough for ISIS to take root but backed off on his bellicose “red line” proclamation and let Assad survive. Obama created a vacuum and Putin filled it. There will be many more Obama created messes for the next guy to deal with that will come up in the next year. I honestly don’t see what we can do in this situation, short of fighting Russia, except let Russia deal with ISIS. Recognizing reality on the ground is a plus for a candidate in my view. What would you do? Fight the Russian over ISIS?