ISIS is a global movement. It is in North Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, Pakistan, Afghanistan, the US, Europe, et. al. When they are defeated, we can talk about a world without radical jihadists. It is a long way off.
We had no legitimate reason to depose Assad.
Assad was and probably is still bent on getting a nuclear weapon. Remember Operation Orchard conducted by the Israelis? Assad has joined forces with the biggest state sponsor of terrorism, Iran, in supporting groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, though now he denounces them.
He is also aligned with the Russians. Tartus hosts a Soviet-era naval supply and maintenance base, under a 1971 agreement with Syria, which is still staffed by Russian naval personnel. Tartus is the last Russian military base outside the former Soviet Union, and its only Mediterranean fueling spot, sparing Russia’s warships the trip back to their Black Sea bases through straits in Turkey, a NATO member.
We didn't initiate the movement to remove Assad. His own people did.
The humanitarian cost of this administration’s reckless interventionism has far exceeded all of Assad’s alleged atrocities.
Alleged? It is actually a lack of intervention at the beginning of the Syrian civil war that allowed it to spread and attracted jihadists to the struggle. The US is not to blame for the Syrian civil war. Assad and his father are to blame.
Destabilizing Egypt, Libya, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen was supposed to usher in peace? Only if you believe the Madhi prophecies.
Are you talking about the Arab Spring that started in Tunis and spread? Are you talking about Saddam's invasions of Iran and then Kuwait? Are you talking about OBL who declared war against the US in his 1996 fatwa? Or his 1998 bombings of our two Embassies in East Africa that left 5,000 killed or wounded? Or the 2000 attack against the USS Cole? Or the 1993 and 2001 attacks against the WTC?
Our military leadership is infected with the Stockholm Syndrome. Islam is inherently evil, as are all its true practitioners. It is completely irreconcilable with a pluralistic society.
The military doesn't make policy, it implements it at the behest of the CIC and Congress. Did Clinton or Bush 43 ever say that Islam is inherently evil? Is there any politician of any stripe that says Islam is inherently evil? None is the answer.