Accept the Uncomfortable Truth: It’s Time to Support Assad

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/429355/supporting-assad-best-option
Accept the Uncomfortable Truth: It’s Time to Support Assad

by Jay Hallen | The National Review | January 7, 2016

As the Syrian civil war and refugee crisis metastasize, we need a new approach for these unfolding human tragedies. To date, the Obama administration has mostly sat on the sidelines, in part because of war fatigue, but mostly because in the crowded mix of factions fighting in Syria, there are no good actors to support.

After the Pentagon’s embarrassing admission that $500 million put only “four or five” Syrian opposition fighters on the ground, it is clear that it’s fantasy to think we can find reliable Syrian allies who are both anti-ISIS and anti-Assad — which is the official policy of the administration and most leading presidential candidates. It would require threading a needle that is impossibly thin, with the assumption that we could vet and then arm rebels who might claim loyalty to the U.S. one day, but who resort to sectarian and tribal vendettas the next. And even in the event that we did find such a group and it assumed control, we’d still have a long way to go before consolidating power and making the transition to relative peace.

But the gravity of the Syria crisis is such that we no longer have the luxury of holding out for a solution that is ideologically appealing. Realpolitik is the only option. Throwing U.S. support behind President Bashar al-Assad is simply the best, or least bad, option left. Supporting Assad means confronting three uncomfortable truths, all of which simmer just beneath the policy debates on the airwaves and at Capitol Hill.

 First is the admission that the Middle East was a safer and more stable place with Saddam Hussein and Moammar Qaddafi in power. To be clear, both had murdered their own people en masse and were megalomaniacs of the first order. However, they were also secular despots who kept jihadism and sectarian violence in check. Power vacuums stemming from the demise of both tyrants have incubated some of the worst chaos, hatred, and human misery that the world has ever seen. If ISIS represents the worst-case scenario, then Assad is preferable. http://www.nationalreview.com/article/429355/supporting-assad-best-option