@layman, the man Assad is not important. It is the regime Assad, i.e. the
Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party of Syria, which has ruled Syria for half a century. It's effectively a one-party regime, like Singapore, which is so much admired by Westerners. It has nearly 2 million members and there is no viable political alternative. If the Baath is removed from power by Western military intervention, like in Iraq, the only alternative is an Islamist regime, like we saw in Egypt after the fall of Mubarak and like we see in Turkey, where the AKP eclipses all other parties.
Assad the "monster" is a simplistic image created in the West for the bleating sheep to demonize the man before slaying the monster. Nearly 5,000 years ago, Gilgamesh, the ruler of the city of Ur, demonized the guardian of the cedar forest Humbaba as a monster before slaying him by ruse and deceit in what is today's Lebanon and Syria. 5,000 years and nothing has changed, except that it was about timber back then, while it is about oil today. But apart from that, human politics is still played with the same sordid tricks and lies.
Interestingly enough, recently new tablets of the Gilgamesh saga have been discovered which portray
Humbaba not as a monster but as the beloved leader of a paradise:
"Where Humbaba came and went there was a track, the paths were in good order and the way was well trodden ... Through all the forest a bird began to sing: A wood pigeon was moaning, a turtle dove calling in answer. Monkey mothers sing aloud, a youngster monkey shrieks: like a band of musicians and drummers daily they bash out a rhythm in the presence of Humbaba."I don't believe that the rebels, which have turned Syria into the hell of a proxy war, have any support in the population.
If the Americans want to topple Assad, they would have to fight the Russians. Americans only fight small and weak countries that have been disarmed first. The 2,000 US special forces illegally in Syria serve no purpose except to discredit the Kurds as Yankee lackeys. If the Americans want to establish Kurdistan as a separate unit, they face the opposition from Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Iran and Russia. They would consolidate an anti-American coalition in the region.
Of the available options, Assad always was the best option for Syria. Today he is the only option for ending the civil war and the suffering of the people of Syria. Western leaders that have tried to topple the Syrian government are 1st grade war criminals and ought to spend the rest of their days in prison (there are times when even a saint wishes for the death penalty to be reintroduced).
Each side makes very absolute claims in these things which I find irritating, pompous and unhelpful.
If you are attacked with simplistic political slogans like the "monster Assad" perpetually repeated by the media, you have no choice but to reply in a similar manner because the other side will not even listen to arguments describing the infinitely complex reality of the political situation.
But there can be no doubt about who started it. UKUS have interfered in the region since the 19th century and the US has tried to destabilize Syria since 1949. The ideology of the Baath party is:
Anti-imperialism, Arab nationalism, Arab socialism, Anti-Zionism, Left-wing nationalism, Pan-Arabism, SecularismThat doesn't sit well with our "friends" in Washington.
@Zamuel, in Germany we know a thing or two about "vassal status", it's not pleasant, especially when our imperial overlords try to drag us into another war. As to Syria, you have lost it - doubly; you have lost the plot and the empire has lost the war.