Donald Trump manages to be more sensible on Syria than Hilary

[abaris]

I'm a pretty cynical guy myself, I enjoy practical approaches.  That, though, goes beyond anything I;d be willing to argue in favor of.  I;ll stand there with a 249 and gun them down in the streets, if it can't be avoided....but lets not sanitize what we're discussing.

We don't need to sanitize anything here. I know it's not the nicest thing to say, but since we're talking western interests in any case, it's the wiser course to back the one and only proven secular force in the region.

Unless we're interested in another Lybia or Afghanistan, that is.

Noone really gives a shit over the population. To claim that is sanitizing the cynical approach on both sides. That's the only hard fact we have in this quagmire. Otherwise the refugee crisis would have been met differently. So, if noone gives a shit, we could at least try not to fuck ourselves up the ass by backing this or that rebel organisation that may or may not invoke the next theocracy in the region.

The only forces having proven to really fight Isis are the Kurds, the Iranians and Assad. But we're not backing the Kurds, since that would piss off our darling Erdogan. We're not backing the Iranians, since they aren't good people in our perception, and we're not backing Assad because big bad bogeyman.

Yeah, well he isn't mister nice guy. But he at least kept the lid on the kettle. Taking it off didn't go over so well in Iraq. Not the beakon of democracy but yet another trouble spot that cost more than 4000 American troops their lives. I don't even mention the more than hundred thousand Iraquis dying, since that would require giving a shit.