I have long argued that ISIS and Assad are not separate problems to be chosen between, but are action and reaction, cause and symptom, chicken and egg: impossible to untangle no matter how much we might like to.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Da'esh and Assad are not separate problems.
If Assad continues to conduct strikes against the Free Syrian Army at will, it would be very difficult for them to have any success against ISIS.
Assad has to go. I mean, the way that ISIS can recruit, and the rebels that are in the north, and all the chaos that's happening through a lot of Syria circles around a lot of people that do not like Assad.
Assad's regime helped ISIS grow by attacking other opposition forces and rarely targeting ISIS.
Iran's Ayatollah Khamenei and Assad are two sides of the same terror coin. Letting Assad continue to wield lethal power means that Tehran's terror network - from Hezbollah to the Houthis - will persist in threatening the West.
If Syria wants to be part of the international community, there are some conditions that they have to meet. And the first one is to stop embracing the terrorism.
The deep problems that afflict the Middle East are not easy to fix, but they must be dealt with if we are not to see a son of ISIS, or even a grandson of ISIS, developing in the years to come.
Actually, if you look at the essence of ISIS, how it came about, it's the product of foreign invasion. Foreign invasion in Iraq led to removal of Saddam Hussein, and we're not unhappy with that, but the point is that foreign presence in any territory has created dynamics. And you cannot avoid those dynamics.
There is a conflict in the Middle East between two entities, and they're both right, each in their own way.
Both Iraq and Syria are a fissile mixture of ethnicities and religions thrown together after Versailles by departing French and British imperialists and only kept together by Baathist tyranny and violence.
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