As much as the West does not like it,there are no realistic alternatives to the best of a bad situation Assad.None, zilch, zero.The fact as a matter of hindsight is Obama backed the wrong horse when he backed the rebels and he does not want to eat crow this late in the game by admitting he was strategically wrong.The existence of “moderate” rebels are not so much a solution as they are a Western fictional storyline to hold out the pretense that there is an alternative to Assad and justify the West do nothing position while criticizing Russian overreach.They do not exist in any sizable force.The best thing President Obama can do right now is to stay irrelevant and whine on the sidelines while the Russians handle this thing and no doubt will collect some of the spoils.
Disagree. The real enemies are not ISIS, they are Iran and its agents, namely Assad and Putin. Assad is a butcher who has almost no support in Syria left, except for the small minority of Alawites, is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Syrians (and the making of refugees of millions of them). He should be hanging from a lamppost by now, just like Mussolini. And if that’s not bad enough, he is now a satrap of the Mullahs in Iran. And Putin, who is tight with both Assad and Iran, wants to make sure his friend stays in power, Russia’s navy (what there is of it) has a warm water port on the Med, and has a base within striking distance of Israel and Mid East oil. And don’t forget, it was Iran, not ISIS, who kept over 50 Americans hostage for 444 days in our embassy! Iran has not gotten payback or any sort of “karma” for that. Seriously, even an ISIS controlled Syria would be better for the USA, Israel and the Syrian people themselves than what they’ve got now.