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What the hell? Assad has bombed many innocent civilians and you are saying he is a force for good?

You cannot defeat evil by supporting evil.

yes, because assad will just do what "you" (who's "we" supposed to be anyway?) ask of him.
maybe, you know, send him a few weapons. no one even needs to know. worked great in the past too!

ISIS threatens Syria as well. We wouldn't have to do anything to make him engage. And I never said anything about weapons. The whole idea here is to weaken both parties.

I don't think we're blaming ourselves at all for what happened in Syria or the formation of ISIS

The Syrian Civil War was a Syrian Civil war. They started it themselves after they saw Libya oust their dictator and wanted in on the action.

Really, the US had very little influence over it at all

We had good reason for not supporting Assad at the beginning. When protesters formed and asked for fair government, he responded with bullets and bombing his own civilians. That's how it all started.

Then the rebels formed, then the terrorist groups formed, or others like Al Qaeda jumped in. Later ISIS was forged from the ruins of the massacred populace. When you bomb your own country to bits, this is to be expected. Assad bears the weight of that burden. Not us

Even then, the US was apprehensive about who to support. Obama could see that the Syrian people were being abused by their own leader and wanted to help by supporting the FSA. However the amount of terror groups forming at the same time caused a lot of confusion. People struggled to tell the Rebels and the terrorists apart. So decisions on who to support were hotly debated and actions suppressed.

This went on until finally: all Syrians who wanted free democracy either fled or died. Leaving behind a majority of Assad supporters in the Syria telling the world that they liked Assad. We let them have him.

The remaining opposition merged together to become ISIS

So overall. Nobody did jack shit about Assad…. and I think its because we didn't help the rebels enough that we have ISIS. Not because we helped them at all

If Assad was kicked out of office at the very beginning when the protests were peaceful, and if we replaced Assad with the government that the protesters wanted: one that was fair to both the sunni and shiite muslim populations, we wouldn't have Assad or ISIS. We would just have Syria

Did I just walk into the Russophile part of /pol/ again?

Later ISIS was forged from the ruins of the massacred populace.

ISIS goes back as early as 2003, though they only became known after 'establishing' their caliphate in 2014, assad is killing his people since 2011.

Leaving behind a majority of Assad supporters in the Syria telling the world that they liked Assad. We let them have him.
The remaining opposition merged together to become ISIS

not exactly. it is true that the free syrian army (the loose formation of anti-assad rebels) became a huge mess because of idelogical differences within this opposition, and that a growing number is joining the al-nursa front (close to al-quaeda), but the secular parts of the FSA now have to fight both assad and islamic terrorists. sames goes for the kurdish YPG/YPJ, in fact the kurdish militias active in iraq, syria and their borders have been the biggest opposition to ISIS since the biginning of the rapid expansion of the islamic state.

So overall. Nobody did jack shit about Assad…. and I think its because we didn’t help the rebels enough that we have ISIS. Not because we helped them at all

If Assad was kicked out of office at the very beginning when the protests were peaceful, and if we replaced Assad with the government that the protesters wanted: one that was fair to both the sunni and shiite muslim populations, we wouldn’t have Assad or ISIS. We would just have Syria

i overall agree, but seeing in what condition libya, egypt and the other arab countries are after their arab spring, i don't think the thread of ISIS wouldn't exist. they have existed for years before the syrian civil war, and they expanded the fastest in iraq, not syria.
a stable government (if it would've been established and mostly secular) would've however eliminated one of the frontlines (that against the assad loyalists) and allowed to concentrate on fighting ISIS. however "us" "replacing" the government is not a democratic process, but one guided by "our" political and economic interests.

SacremPyrobolum wrote:

ISIS threatens Syria as well. We wouldn’t have to do anything to make him engage. And I never said anything about weapons. The whole idea here is to weaken both parties.

yes, and crushing all even remotely democratic forces in syria between the assad/ISIS frontlines. your empathy for the syrian people is beyond my understanding.

@Maus: wat?