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Assad is a major ally of Iran and Russia, traditional enemies of the US.
So far the Al Qaeda guy seems better than Assad.
Iran and Russia are only enemies of the American regime, Al Qaeda is an enemy of the American people.
The Al Qaeda guy is currently having ethnic and religious minorities thrown off of buildings, is that better than Assad?
Oh, I think Iran and Russia are just as much enemies of the American people as Al Qaeda is.
Regardless, can we do the math on how many people was Assad killing? I think it was more.
There's no great option here.
Sorry, could you remind me when Russia or Iran killed thousands of Americans on American soil? I seem to have forgotten.
Assad was fighting a civil war against hardened Salafis backed by half of the Middle East and the CIA whereas Al-Jolani is sending death squads to slaughter civilians protected by lightly armed militias to sell their families into slavery. If the death toll is even comparable it would indicate that the Al Qaeda terrorist is far worse than the secular dictator.
There is, actually; stay out of it entirely! Don't fund or provide air support for Al Qaeda!
For the overwhelming majority of American history, the US stayed out of Middle Eastern conflicts and miraculously during that time never had to fear the risk of conflict with Iran or Syria. It's only after the decision was made to support a certain new country that suddenly America found itself obligated to support head chopping Al Qaeda terrorists.
I love that you had to specify "thousands" and "on American soil" to exempt Iran and Russia killing or facilitating the deaths of thousands of Americans other places. And confusing willingness with capability.
Here's a funny twist you might not be aware of: There were allegations before 2003 that Saddam had supported Al Qaeda. That wasn't true.
But it is true that Iran has been hosting Al Qaeda in Iran for years at this point.
Ever heard of WWII? The Cold War? We stopped being isolationist a long time ago. The Islamic regime chose to make us an enemy.
Yes, because there is categorical difference between killing occupying soldiers in combat and killing civilians in a terrorist attack.
You're proving my point; before the Cold War America had no problems with the Middle East. From the perspective of the average American as opposed to a Lockheed executive or a lobbyist for a foreign country it has been all cost for no benefit. Isolationism produced superior results to imperialism.
Were the Marines in Lebanon in combat?
I suppose you believe we should have stayed out of WWII as well. Should we have resisted global communism? If you're a committed isolationist then I'm not going to be able to convince you otherwise.
The standard narrative on WWII is vulnerable to the complication that in defeating one set of horrifyingly evil tyrannies, we made alliance with and gave away half the planet to another set of at least equally-horrifyingly-evil tyrannies, who we then could not prevent from decimating, immiserating and enslaving the half of the planet so ceded, which we then had to spend the next two generations containing at ruinous cost, and whose ideology fatally poisoned our own nations. I think it's pretty easy to be happy that we crushed Hitler and the Imperial Japanese, while still noting that the outcome was not something we should see as the way we want to do business going forward.
Further, World War II appears to be a pretty contiguous outgrowth of World War I, where we "made the world safe for democracy" in a way that appears to have laid the groundwork for incalculable ruin over the subsequent century.
I think we are, at this moment, enjoying the twilight of our own Belle Epoque. The lessons that I draw from the last century is that fighting to impose control over the whole world is utterly unworkable, hubristic and ruinous. We have more than enough problems at home; we cannot afford to fix all the problems of the wider world.
You don't have to convince me that the US should have taken strong action against the USSR and Red China, since obviously that went poorly for us later on.
And continues to. We got lucky the Cold War went as well as it did, and we have to hope our rivalry with China goes well.
(Of course, one major difference between WWI and WWII is that the Axis did attack us and declare war on us.)
I think WWII does come from the ashes of WWI--undoubtedly--but Hitler was a singular figure, a true Great Man of history. Without him, WWII was not destiny in a way that WWI kinda was from the alliances and ideas of the time.
Without Hitler, perhaps WWII would have been the West vs. the Commies over expansion in Eastern Europe.
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