As Obama's Secretary of State, it was crooked Hillary that did so much to create the mess that is Syria today. Over the past four years President hopey change has slowly backtracked and at last peace is in sight out East. Both ISIS and the, largely Islamofascist and often Al-Qaeda affiliated, Free Syrian Army, FSA, are in retreat. But crooked Hillary has plans to change all of that.
What is it with the Democrats and blood lust? The original Clinton analysis that drove US policy was that Syrian President Assad was such a bad man that the US had a right to intervene to oust him. This was a mindless error at three levels. Firstly why does the US get to decide which regimes are good and which are bad. That Assad must go but Mugabe is okay to stay? It has no right to meddle in the affairs of another nation when not itself threatened. Such meddling always causes blowback that hurts an America. And it is meddling that deficit bound American can no longer afford anyway.
Secondly why was Assad so much worse than, say, those chaps who run Saudi? Which regime allowed women to wear whatever clothes they chose, gave Christians freedom to practice their religion and did not go in for large scale public beheadings of "criminals" including women who had been raped? Syria or Saudi. The answer is, as I am sure you know despite the smokescreen and deceit of a compliant Western mainstream press, Saudi. Both regimes crack down hard on dissent but you can make a very strong case that, pre War, the Saudis were far more authoritarian and brutal. And it is Saudi that is committing large scale war crimes in Yemen right now, old Assad never tried anything like that.
I am not urging toppling the vile house of Saud but merely pointing out that assisting those who want to topple Assad looks like they have made a very selective and non fact based choice.
And finally, at a pragmatic level, one would have thought that crooked Hillary would have learned that ousting strong leaders in the Mid East creates not joyous liberal democracies with affirmative action plans for women and gays but chaotic vacuums and hotbeds of terror. Think Iraq. Think Egypt. Think Libya. Why on earth did crooked Hillary think Syria would be different.
But she did, and so, with money, weapons and international pressure the USA and the West supported the FSA many of whose members are outright Islamofascists and some of whom back Al-Qaeda. That weakened Assad so much that not only did the FSA make gains but so too did ISIS as Hillary created another vacuum of power.
Thankfully Russia and Iran saw the folly that the West was engaging in and, correctly, assumed that the West would be too cowardly to send in "boots on the ground". Russia and Iran had no such fears, did just that and assisted by Russian air power, they have helped the forces of Assad to push back both the FSA and also ISIS. It will be Assad and his allies who drive ISIS out of its "capital" in Raqqa and out of Syria if left unhindered. And then Assad can also rout the FSA, forces who throw folks from tall buildings and behead their opponents just like ISIS.
Syria will be a better place as a result. It will be more liberal and tolerant. Christians will again live without fear. Women will wear what they want. There will be no public executions, beheadings, throwing of people from buildings. The Kurds will rule their areas unhindered and - one hopes - without being bombed by Turkish and Saudi planes. That would indeed be the plans of the allies of American and Britain. The planes of our friends. When Assad wins the war there will be no excuse for our allies to kill the Kurds as they to today without the West objecting.
But crooked Hillary wants to change all that. The mendacious woman has again insisted that the real enemy is Assad. She lies to the people of America with this claim and states that the US will do everything it can to oust him when she is in charge. The woman who says Trump makes the world more dangerous is prepared to go head to head with Russia but to what purpose? The only winners from her stated policy will be ISIS and Al-Qaeda. They must be praying for a Hillary win against Trump this fall.
My hope is that by the time of the inauguration, should crooked Hillary have won the General Election, events will have moved on in Syria with Assad winning control of Raqqa and being a large way towards driving ISIS out of the country altogether.
At that point, surely even crooked Hillary would realise that Assad, though no angel, was really the least bad option all along, as those smart folk in Russia realised. Maybe that might stop her desire to meddle again. But I would not bank on it.