Our previous excuse that we didn't want to "militarize" the crisis by arming people friendly to us has been shown to be fairly idiotic given the more than 60,000 dead that have largely piled up since we chose not to "militarize" the struggle. That ship sailed and we simply chose not to use our influence and power to push the war in ways to benefit us.
Jihadis have become more powerful in Syria as a result of our failure to help people more to our liking. On the bright side, the jihadis are still a minority of the rebels:
There is not one war, but dozens. That’s because the rebels are united in name only and only have their hatred of the Assad dictatorship to create some cooperation. The Islamic terror groups (who comprise about 15 percent of the rebels) are the most disliked because of their sense of superiority, savage reaction to any criticism and openly stated plan to take over the country when the Assads are gone.
So we will have the opportunity for a do-over when the second civil war starts. It will be important to keep the jihadis out of any coalition government and it will be just as important to give the 85% the power to defeat the jihadis as quickly as possible. On the bright side, at least the fighting over the last year has given the jihadis the opportunity to be heartily disliked by most Syrians.
We're lucky our refusal to help the non-jihadis didn't allow Assad the chance to win his war. He screwed up by trying to hold everything with ground forces too small to do the job. He should have fallen back to his core and then expanded outward as he expanded loyal ground forces to regain what he voluntarily gave up.
But it is too late for that, now. The only question is whether the second civil war among the rebels takes place throughout all of Syria if Assad's government simply collapses or if it takes place in the non-Alawite areas if the Assad regime finally makes the fateful step of trying to create a post-Syria Assad regime in a rump country dominated by Alawites.
There might still be a solution that keeps Syria from disintegrating and watching blowback strike the region, while keeping Assad's troops in the fight against the jihadis in a second civil war.
But whatever form the second civil war takes, let's try to win that one rather than agonizing over "militarizing" the situation, eh?
