Unless the Congress authorizes the use of force in Syria, Obama is never going to bomb ISIS in Syria.

This is the job of Congress.

Because Obama has already said he doesn't necessarily need Congress to strike in Syria.

until now. He used ISIS to keep other rebel groups (ones with western backing) down. He basically let them have the northeast of the country, didn't bother fighting them. ONLY NOW is he starting to do airstrikes against them, and that's because he's nervous about new US surveillance flights and the possibility that we will soon begin striking targets in Syria. So, the US doesn't want to reward this bastard for allowing the cancer to grow unchecked when it suited his purposes.

But Assad isn't a threat to the US. So we have mostly left him alone (despite some support for FSA). But he's not going to like it when we end up having to bomb in Syria to take out ISIS, and that's going to put some pressure on him to act against the group himself.

And when did the title 'ISIS' first emerge? I don't recall anyone using that name this time last year, but do recall criticism of Assad for going after terrorists ALL OVER Syria. So I'm wondering about several things.

1) How would you know whether or not Assad was going after ISIS last year?

2) Why were he Western Nations, until the UK Parliament finally refused to continue doing so, backing these anti-Assad terror groups? Where did ISIS get all those US weapons?

I'd like some links, credible links not the Corporate Media propaganda that supports your theory.

Improvised shrapnel-bombs made from old barrels, gas and scrap-metal?
Dropped by helicopters over civilian areas that support the rebels?
Does that ring a bell?

Are we not proposing air strikes now?

(Not saying any of this is good, just trying to understand what reasons have been given for over throwing Assad.)

He was bombing urban areas full of civilians that had nothing to do with the rebels except sympathizing with them.

is still your enemy.

Siding with Assad would be a mistake.

in Raqqa, he started to attack them.

Syria jets hit Islamic State targets in Raqqa

Regime planes bombard Islamic State positions as fighters close in on Tabqa air base in northern Raqqa province. Activists say Syrian jets have bombarded positions of the Islamic State group in the northern province of Raqqa as the self-declared jihadists close in on the last army base in the region.

Government forces have previously held off from targeting the Islamic State group, formerly known as ISIL - a strategy that has aided the group's battle against other rebels such as the Islamic Front coalition, the Free Syrian Army and al-Qaeda's affiliate in the Syrian war, the Nusra Front.

Syria's president, Bashar al-Assad, has long painted the uprising in Syria as a foreign-backed conspiracy and his enemies say he has allowed the Islamic State to grow to promote that idea.

The attacks come after the Islamic State group on Thursday captured the headquarters of Syria's 17th Division, based in the Raqqa area. It posted a video online of its operation.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2014/08/syria-islamic-state-raqqa-201481812135189335.html

"So long as you stay out of our yard, we don't care how many Arabs you slaughter. Cross the line and we'll shoot, until then, do whatever you want dudes."

But then, the Kurds have lots of oil. Assad has lots of barley. And since Americans don't know how to make a decent beer...

AFAIK, when ISIS started attacking Kurdish areas they fought back right away. Should the Iraqi Kurds have taken the initiative and attacked ISIS in Syria before it had the chance to invade Iraq and the Kurdish area?

Does Assad not consider eastern and northern Syria to be part of the country anymore? "As long as you stay out of the part of Syria that I still control, I don't care how many Arabs you slaughter in other parts of Syria."

That seems to have been the deal that Assad had with ISIS until last month when the latter broke it and captured his last military base in the north. One would think that Assad would have been attacking ISIS from the minute the showed up on Syrian territory - kind of like what the Kurds did in their territory.

Just as in Iraq, it's spent more time attacking the Iraqi army.

Why would Assad interrupt them/ Why would the Iraqi Kurds?

It's basic strategy, pampango; let IS eliminate your other rivals. Doing so reduced the fronts you are fighting on, and weakens the last man standing, whoever it is. Then mop up.

concentrate on attacking ISIS, while the Syrian military leaves them alone and also concentrates on ISIS?" This alternative would accomplish the same goal: "let them eliminate each other, weaken the last man standing, then come in and mop up" without creating the monster that everyone considers ISIS to be.

It is still odd to me that he chose to form his tacit alliance with ISIS against the other opposition groups instead of the other way around.

I certainly agree that Assad is a very smart man and is interested in one thing - remaining the dictator of Syria (all of it if possible, a smaller part of it if unavoidable).

Apparently they figure they can overthrow Assad, then maybe take on IS with US backing or something.

I think Assad's strategy is to wear down the not-insane rebel factions until they have to capitulate to one or the other - and almost all of them who do so will favor Syria over IS. Thus the core of the insurrection is co-opted, Syria's forces get a renewed bit of strength, and IS finds itself hammered on three fronts - Syria, Iraq, Kurdistan (Kurdistan is going to be a reality after this, almost 100% certain.)

It's not terribly complex, but then it doesn't actually need to be.

control the part of Syria where the Sunni majority lives. (And Assad may have not believed they were capable of achieving that.) ISIS does not particularly care if he rules the rest of Syria.

I understand Assad's tactical decision fight the "not-insane" rebel factions and to in effect divide the country (at least temporarily) between himself and the "insane" rebel faction. He has 'lost' the battle with ISIS (though a 'battle' with no fighting) but he is still in power (if his domain is somewhat diminished). If he 'lost' to the other rebel factions, he would - if he was lucky - enjoying his billions in retirement, perhaps in Russia since it has been a great friend.

I think that proves he is nothing more than a common, self-centered dictator solely interested in retaining power. If he were really primarily interested in protecting Syria from 'terrorists' (which is what he has claimed publicly all along), he might have adopted a different strategy, but I understand what he is doing and why.

But to say that Assad deliberately let ISIS have northeast Syria is tendentious. Syria is the midst of a multi-sided civil war, and the Syrian army is stretched thin.

Just remember, there was no ISIS in Syria before the civil war began. And our government, along with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, and others, has had a hand in it all along. This is blowback.

as the rebel group to form a tacit alliance with. "I won't attack you if you don't attack me. We can both concentrate on attacking other rebel groups."

Could he not have worked out such a tacit agreement with the Free Syrian Army or other rebel groups rather than with ISIS? That would have had the logic of having Syrians cooperating with each other to defeat and expel a group of foreign jihadists. Then Assad and the Syrian rebel groups could have gone back to fighting each other.

Instead when Assad chose which group of rebels he would not attack, he chose the group of foreign jihadists. As you said, ISIS was not even in Syria at the beginning so they would have been relatively easy to defeat when they first started to show up had Assad not chosen to give them a free ride.

It was an odd choice of a partner.

It makes eminent, cynical sense. Again, the Syrian military is a force under severe stress on multiple fronts.

Yeah, he might have miscalculated, especially after ISIS rolled through Iraq and got all those new US-made military toys and took them back to Syria. ISIS is definitely scarier now than it was before that.

And, yes, it is good (in some ways) to have ISIS as a bogeyman. Assad has been trying to say all along that his opponents are "terrorists," and ISIS certainly fills the bill.

The tactic of letting rebel groups fight each other as much as possible makes, as you say, "eminent, cynical sense". And the idea of letting one rebel group alone so that it has a relative advantage over the other groups makes some tactical sense as well.

My question is: How/why did he choose ISIS as the rebel group that would be the beneficiary of the decision not attack militarily? It could just as easily been one of the other rebel groups since they have been fighting with ISIS, just as ISIS has been fighting with them.

working hands-in -hands.

And who can blame him?

But the Syrian state and ISIS are mortal enemies. ISIS would chop off Assad's head in a second and probably murder as many of his Alawites as they can.

Instead they had a tacit (or explicit, who knows) agreement not to attack each other. That sounds like some really friendly 'mortal enemies'. The other rebel groups were apparently even more 'mortal enemies' of Assad than ISIS was. He chose not to attack ISIS while his military concentrated on the other rebel groups.

Almost as overwhelming as Kim Jong-Un's.

I hear you but I think it is possible that some segments of the people of Syria have rallied around Assad in the face of foreign mercs and Wahhabis invading the country, much the way GWB's numbers soared when we were attacked in 2001.

Assad is NOT the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, ISIS, Khomeni, etc. If we succeed in overthrowing Assad it seems likely that extremist Sunni Muslims will take control in Syria because they have the numbers and Saudi money to do so. I don't see how that would be better for the region or for the US.

...because he's guilty of atrocities of his own, and would likely use any assistance we gave him to consolidate his own power, at the expense of the populace there. He's the head of a minority party that's clinging to power by means of brutality. That doesn't mean ISIS is any better (or worse), just that its one more tragic mess that we don't really have a good means to do anything about.

I think ISIS is being used as an excuse for the US to help overthrow Assad. I also suspect that any further moves by Russia into the Ukraine will prompt an invasion of Syria by another "coalition of the willing." And I agree that a weak and unstable Syria suits many of PTB just fine.