The fantastic thing about trying to have a conversation with Lick is that he completely eschews the history of the US's war making/Couping ways as if they never happened, aren't happening now and never will happen. As if the largest intelligence complex and military in the world isn't locked in on US hegemony and geo-strategic dominance by any means . . . and that the State Department is a diplomatic wing and not in fact what they really are . . . just another arm of our military-intelligence complex.
We've been engaged with trying to overthrow Assad for 13 years and counting, we have troops stationed in Syria and we have bombed targets in Syria many times . . . in Lick's world, that never happened.
If the US or Israel wanted to kill Assad, they could have done it easily, but I think they preferred to let him just kind of hang on and see what happens. The US has completely destroyed Assad's ability to rebuild Syria and is ok with Syria remaining a failed state when the alternative was an ISIS controlled state. The US has control of all the oil so as long as that is denied to Assad and the sanctions remain the real power doesn't really change much. The US did not want ISIS taking Demascus so we armed the YPG, Turkey arming and funding al-Nusra, Russia keeping their bases and bombing ISIS but also al-Nusra.
Its a pretty bleak situation however you cut it. The people that say Obama should have "held the red line" when Assad dropped chemical weapons should look at the situation now and try to make a case for how the US was going to have great options. Get rid of Assad? Then what?
Israel has a big interest in cutting off Hizbollah from Iran and if Syria has a Sunni/Islamist/"reformed" al-Qaeda led government with al-Jolani leading it then they may be willing to risk it for the biscuit to destroy Hizbollah and isolate Iran.
I wonder if when people talk about US global leadership and "promoting democracy" if they actually look at some of the case studies.
While I don't think dax and I agree on everything with regard to Syria, I think we can both agree Trump is inheriting a big mess again. I don't have much faith in him to solve any of it and certainly not with little Marco and Hegspeth or Ron DeSantis running point.
I have some pretty dark visions about the next couple years for the region.
