Stop propping up the dictators, start spending more on non-military aid that helps the average person.

As you point out in the Captagon thread, we are still in Neocon-land, policy wise: Assad must go, Syria will never submit to his rule again, etc. etc. This from people whose habit is to assume that anybody can be made to submit to anything they want.

Which means we are still in Wahabbi-land too, and Erdogan-land, and partition-land.

Which means more war, you bet.

And Assad is not going anywhere, in fact at this point the upshot will be to cement him more firmly in place. Right now we could cut deals, in a month or so they will not be on the table any more. When you double down and lose, you lose more.

By Gareth Porter

In the wake of the ISIS terrorist attack on Paris, President Barack Obama declared that his administration has the right strategy on ISIS and will “see it through.” But the administration is already shifting its policy to cooperate more closely with the Russians on Syria, and an influential former senior intelligence official has suggested that the administration needs to give more weight to the Assad government and army as the main barrier to ISIS and other jihadist forces in Syria.

Obama’s Europeans allies as well as U.S. national security officials have urged the United State to downgrade the official U.S. aim of achieving the departure of President Bashar al-Assad from Syria in the international negotiations begun last month and continued last weekend. Such a shift in policy, however, would make the contradictions between the U.S. interests and those of the Saudis, who continue to support jihadist forces fighting with al-Qaeda’s Syria branch, al-Nusra Front, increasingly clear.

---

CIA Director John Brennan reversed the earlier U.S. decision to reject intelligence sharing with Russia on Islamic State. Revealing that he had had several conversations with his Russian counterpart since the beginning of Russia’s air offensive in Syria, Brennan said the ISIS threat “demands” an “unprecedented level of cooperation” among international intelligence services. Brennan said he and his Russian counterpart had begun exchanging intelligence focused primarily on the flow of terrorists from Russia into Iraq and Syria but that now U.S.-Russian cooperation needed to be “enhanced”.

At the G-20 summit in Antalya, Turkey on Nov. 15-16, Obama acknowledged for the first time in his meeting with Putin that Russia was indeed combating ISIS, according to a White House official. In fact, the Russians had been hitting ISIS targets regularly during October, including what it said was a command center in the ISIS capital, Raqqa. The Obama administration had refused to acknowledge that fact in October and instead focused on the Russian targeting of non-ISIS groups. But the White House press leak about the Obama-Putin conversation did not repeat that complaint.

https://consortiumnews.com/2015/11/22/rethinking-assad-must-go-slogan/

The way I read this is that the CIA since 2012 has been saying that Assad must Stay...yet Obama and Kerry have chosen, in statements, otherwise. So, where were Obama and Kerry getting information that disagreed with the CIA all this time? Was it just the Pentagon? And, this would be the second time they have reversed course--remembering when Kerry practically had U.S. bombing Syria over Assad and had to do a turn around with Obama supposedly at the last minute deciding to let the Russians help Assad by removing the chemical weapons. If its not the Pentagon influencing Obama and Kerry then what other part of the government?

I remember watching CNN the day before we were to bomb Syria and there was a panel of "former Military" (the usual ones) who are paid consultants for media. The three of them who were mostly hawks in their apperances after 9/11 were oddly expressing grave caution over the results of removing Assad. It struck me because it was an about face for them. Two were former Col. Jack Jacobs and former General Barry McCaffery who are Media institutions. I can't remember the name of the third. If it was the Pentagon..what about these former Military Spokespersons?

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Chuck Hagel said Sunday that the Obama administration has not clearly laid out its political strategy in the Middle East, a concern he expressed to the White House in a memo while serving as secretary of defense.

Hagel said the administration must first define whether the enemy is Syrian President Bashar Assad or the Islamic State, then unite with unlikely allies who have a common enemy.

"We can keep killing people, we can keep playing a proxy war game and destroying the Middle East," Hagel said on CNN's "State of the Union." "But the Russians have got to be part of this, I think Iranians have got to be part of this."

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/article/2576925

The larger the debacle, the longer it takes to admit that it is so, that it is the case, that all must be done over, that the mighty have been very mightily wrong, wrong, wrong.

There is movement, there is alarm, but too many leaders have painted themselves into corners.

However, there seems to be movement on the battlefield too, events on the ground may well overtake all this.

This is also the first time I've seen numbers on the Sunni's and how they comprise more of the refugees than the Shia.

Well Said...although...

I've never found you cynical....perhaps because I'm more so.....? Yet, I've always been called a "Hopeful Pessimist" by people I've counted as friends.

So..there's that.

Maybe labeling ourselves just fits into what we see "outside in the MSM" and we've become prey to those who count anyone not "RAH! RAH! for some bit of news or "group think" as "Not a Player." IOWD's...."The Donald Trump Syndrome"...makes it seem that some are less rational than others, these days?

I'm not giving up "WHO I AM" to Idiocy. If that makes me a pessimist..so be it.

Anyway...just ignore my tirade. I think being a "Hopeful Pessimist" is quite a compliment. "Rational Observer" is a bit more intellectual, though. Better to be a bit of both, though..it confuses the Wolves.

Back to "Foreign Affairs" ......it's good to have this for as long as it lasts for discussion. What TIMES WE LIVE IN!