the brookings institute as a valid source of information? really?

it's not that you shouldn't read information from the brookings institute. it's useful to understand the propaganda. it's that you shouldn't take it seriously. this is ground zero for the source of right-wing lies to fuel the american war machine.

if you want to know what's going on in syria, i would advise looking into the work of the independent left-leaning journalists in the area, like robert fisk and patrick cockburn.

there has never been a civil war in syria. it was invaded by foreign troops looking to topple the government, of which isis is a rogue contingent. if it weren't for assad protecting the civilians in this region from this onslaught, we would not be talking about the "syrian civil war". we would be talking about the genocide in syria.

that's not to say the assad government should be shielded of criticism, but it's the kind of criticism that you would level at churchill for the firebombing of dresden. which is not to compare him to churchill, either. but, he's fighting bad guys with surplus russian arms that are largely unable to carry out the pinpoint strikes we claim we can. and he's been fighting bad guys from the start.

just take a look at syrian public opinion. it is firmly backing assad.

taking out isis is the right strategy. but, it's not possible by merely bombing them. their source of funding and supplies needs to be cut. and, washington refuses to do what is necessary to accomplish this.

http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/susan-on-soapbox/2015/09/new-robocall-poll-assesses-stephen-harpers-response-to-syria

Arachne646
Umm...I would agree with pretty much everything you say, except that President Assad is a cruel dictator, even more than his father. However, he did hold a democratic Presidential election last year, I was surprised to see, with multiple candidates, and multiple international observers proclaimed it "free, fair and transparent". There is some opposition in Syria. There's Kurdistan, with a Kurdish militia, and opposition like our Occupy or Black Lives Matter, which takes guts to go up against the army violently suppressing you from the start, apparently; the protesters were violent from the start, I guess, too, armed and destroying government buildings.

But, as you say, from the start, there was foreign involvement, by the Turkish intelligence agency, which transported anti-tank weapons to the rebels. Soon tens of thousands of extreme Islamist foreign fighters, and weapons and supplies to match, were trucked in by Western countries, in the summer of 2012, because secular, religiously diverse Syria that Assad ruled was not at all what they envisioned. It is a proxy war to remove a Russian-backed dictator and install a U.S./Israel puppet dictator as in Egypt. This was planned ahead of time in Washington, and many other places.

deathtokoalas
your second paragraph gets it right (although it is missing the dynamic of a struggle between the turks and saudis for control. when you hear talk of a conflict between "moderate" and "extremist" rebels, what it means is a proxy war between turkey and saudi arabia. and, this is much to the annoyance of washington.). but, the first is propaganda.

the current assad was not groomed for power. it was his brother that was supposed to take over. but, his brother was killed and the role fell to him - against his will.

the truth is that this guy is a doctor. he planned his life around running a medical practice. when the circumstances came up that he had to step in, he accepted it but he immediately set in motion a transfer of power to a democratic system. if you listen to hillary clinton talk about the (now not so) recent elections in syria, she makes it sound like they were meant as a concession. in fact, it was the first thing assad did when he was appointed, because he was an unwilling participant from the start.

but, when the war started, he had to modify the situation because....you can't transfer from decades of military rule to pluralism when you're fighting a war against extremists.

it's widely understood that he has no influence in the military, which is co-ordinating the anti-terror campaign largely as a proxy of russia. well, he has no military training.

i mean, go down to your local hospital and find a doctor and tell me how good you think this person would be at running a military dictatorship. they wouldn't have the slightest idea...

in the long run, the military will need to be dismantled entirely. they cannot be left in place at the conclusion of the war, as they cannot be expected to forgive and forget (and understandably so - this is an existential struggle, for the syrians). but, this will do nothing to end the conflicts that exist. it's a post-war, reconstruction aim. and, few people in syria would be more likely to agree with this than assad himself, should the circumstances bring us to that point.