The pundits were wrong about Assad and the Islamic State. As usual, they're not willing to admit it

[Igel]

12. The belief there was no military solution didn't extend just to pundits.

It took a bit of a jolt to stop and reverse ISIS.

However, it wasn't because it looked like Assad/Russia was going to defeat them. It was because they were becoming a big-ass problem that needed help. Without pushing ISIS back in Iraq, it would be hard for Assad to defeat ISIS. Iraq by itself was fairly impotent. It took the US/Kurds to do the trick in Iraq, and once pretty much demolished in Iraq it was necessary to continue in Syria.

Sadly, as before, the help turned out mostly to be for Iran, emboldened by all sorts of victories. So Lebanon is more of a problem now than before, Yemen is a disaster waiting to happen.

It's unclear who, exactly, was dominating the skies before the pushback against ISIS in Syria. It wasn't like the US was conducting a lot of bombing raids against Syria. Mostly they were against some Islamist groups in Syria. The "there's no military solution" dweebs continued their chorus until it was clear that there was no non-military solution. Until then, the risk of hitting a Russia soldier kept the US terrified.

I don't know who, exactly, let the ISIS fighters escape. The only "witness" was with a local group who said it was their deal, but that the US knew/was behind it. However, this was also a defector from that group to the Turks, who have no interest in either defending those who let ISIS escape nor loyalty to NATO since, well, it's not in their current interests to do so. In any event, I doubt that the loyalty to the US on the ground extended to weeks of prolonged fighting. There's a long tradition in the area of letting your enemies escape, provided that they go and harass your other enemies. The bombing runs on Raqqa to defeat the ISIS fighters had scant adherents here--hard to not hit civilians. Or the next best thing, young militant men who become civilians when their guns are taken from their dead bodies because weapons are in short supply.


Assad must go. However, since he's not going to, all that the "liberal neo-cons" like Obama and Sanders just stirred up the cesspool (in collaboration with many, many others). The whole "leading from behind" was a disaster in Libya. So while I think Assad should go, and have since the dentist took over from his bastard father, I don't think I really ever thought encouraging the weak uprising against him was the means to this end. And, as with Tito's death, when you have a dictator that exacerbates ethnic tensions, their departure would lead to a lot of bloodshed eventually, when the order maintaining terror and obeisance weakened.