Originally Posted by Rochard

Shouldn't we be encouraging this?

The United States has a habit of saying "This person is bad, let's remove them" which just opens up the door to more problems. We did this in Iraq, and we did this in Afghanistan. We've toppled leaders in other countries too. In short, we take a bad situation and make it worse.

The United States has never liked Assad. He is not a good leader, and he has done some bad things to his country and his citizens. That is disappointing. But we have a choice between Assad or ISIS (or whatever their name is this week). The devil you know is better than the devil you don't know, and obviously in this case Assad is much better than ISIS. Military strikes into Syria by the United States and or NATO isn't a good idea; It makes Assad and the Russians nervous. Allowing the Russians to handle ISIS in Syria fixes that problem.

We know exactly what Russia wants here - They want to cement their relationship with Assad (or rather Syria), an ally in the Middle East, and a warm water port in the Mediterranean.