Embracing Assad Is a Better Strategy for the U.S. Than Supporting the Least Bad Jihadis

WORLD POST/ HUFFINGTON POST
Posted: 09/29/2014
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/graham-e-fuller/us-assad-isis-strategy_b_5898142.html?utm_hp_ref=world
The Middle East today is in as big a mess as I’ve seen it in a lifetime. By most measures it still continues to worsen, as ever new enemies to the U.S. pop up onto the scene. It is attracting polarized youthful jihadis from both East and West ready to fight us — all high on the blood aphrodisiac of beheadings and bombings.
The U.S. and most other countries understandably seek to suppress the present savage civil conflicts raging in Iraq and Syria — now exemplified at its worst in the spread of the violent jihadi Islamic State. If so, Washington had best look first to ending the civil conflict in Syria, the most efficacious way to start unraveling the Middle Eastern knot.