The Other Sunni Awakening

Has our passivity allowed Assad to make the case that he is the lesser of two evils when measured against the threat of jihadi control of Syria if Assad falls?

I thought that we should be supporting the Syrian rebels from the start. After close to two years of letting the rebellion sink or swim on its own, we still refrain--now because Congress worries more about already armed jihadis getting our arms than worrying about Assad's continued rule--from sending arms because jihadis are now a major part of the rebellion. Now the good scenario is that the jihadis are defeated in the post-Assad fight.

But the worst case scenario is that the impact of jihadis fighting against Assad turns most Syrians not just anti-jihadi for the next fight, but turns most Syrians pro-Assad out of fear of jihadis before there is a next fight. That is, most Syrians--Sunnis included--will decide Assad is the lesser of two evils and that even the prospect of victory over the jihadis in the next fight isn't worth the price people will have to pay.

So we've tried not intervening on the theory that our efforts make things worse. But people forget that a decision not to do anything substantive was a decision. And now we risk the effect of passively siding with Assad by failing to help non-jihadi resistance when it was dominant and before jihadis could join the fight.

Isn't "smart" foreign policy grand?