Donald Trump manages to be more sensible on Syria than Hilary

[The Grand Nudger]

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.

Then why did you sanitize it? I'm not sure that any force being a secular force is reason enough to back them in either a chemical attack, or in bombing the remnants of the same...depending on which secular force you're referring to.  What interest, of ours, do we serve, there?

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.

You may not, some of us do.  I;m not willing to offer my support or silent consent to either of the forces involved for what they're doing on the simple basis of their being secular.  That's a complete non-issue to me, in this context.

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.

So why back putin, he wasn't in your list of notables up there...I mean, don't get me wrong...I'm sure they -could- have success if they just stop bombing the shit out of Aleppo and start dropping those bombs on isis instead.  As to assad...is it really surprising that a tyrant is good at dealing with terrorists, so long as we allow a little chlorine gas here and there?  Saddam 2.0? I notice that you ommitted that we -do- back the kurds....which, frankly, isn;t much to brag about either but they;re pretty much the last candidate standing in this shitshow...so?

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.

Better the devil we know, then?  Seems to me like that's exactly what got us into shit in the middle east in the first place.