PaleRider wrote:soysauce wrote:Maybe, but we backed rebels with better credentials in Libya and that never really worked out, and frankly it's difficult stopping the opposition alliance members from turning on each other already..Captain-Socialist wrote:An article I read quite a while back mentioned some secular nationalist, possibly a military defector, rebel leader as "least worse" choice for who to back. Don't remember his name.
That didn't work out because we half assed it in Libya. Al Qaeda and other more opportunist warlords and Islamist groups became well armed and these militias went about and undermined the work of creating a national authority. After Gaddaffi fell there should've been a UN force deployed to disarm the militia and secure the oil fields and cities while training a domestic professional security service.
In a perfect world.
Libya was the one of the very first homefront oppositions that showed up in 2014/2015. People didn't want to go to Libya, for the first time people were saying "Let them or someone else sort it out." That's why the EU had to take up the mantle because the domestic opposition at home was ridiculous as it should've been. Eventually the US casually walked in and tried to do the same in Syria but failed miserably.
I trust Russia more than the United States in this instance. If anyone can disarm and stabilize a regime, it's Russia. Counter-insurgency methods have never been on the side of the United States and our rather ineffective methods of routing the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in Iraq and Afghanistan were...meh at best. The world greatest military cannot fight an unconventional war because our doctrine is opposed to it. That is where our CIA is suppose to step in but hey, what success does that have? We might never know.
Russia needs to go boots on the ground, bring Iran in for support and we can maybe seen the end of ISIS. Right, we might see Syria fall to the Russian-Iran-China axis but I'd prefer that over ISIS truthfully and I doubt anyone could argue that.