Assad recruited other minorities who had suffered under past Sunni domination to be their partners in dominance of the majority. This isn't a pleasant reality to contemplate but that's the way it is. Who can blame minorities like the Christians for taking a way out of being screwed by the majority?
The initial impulses of the Alawites to run the show can at least be understood even though the atrocities carried out to maintain their rule can't be excused.
But when the revolt broke out, there was a window of opportunity to get the minorities to turn on Assad and avoid systematic retribution for their past alignment with Assad. If the minorities thought that Assad was truly on the way out and if we had acted to make that a reality by arming and supporting those early rebels, the minorities could have safely "awakened" and switched sides.
Indeed, the Alawites themselves could have rejected Assad. Remember, even in Iraq with more wealth, not all Sunni Arabs were on the platinum level of minority privilege. In Syria, many Alawites could have been induced to reject Assad. But instead, we did too little to push Assad out while his position was at its weakest. Of we'd done something, perhaps even the Alawites wouldn't find themselves shackled to Assad today:
As far as Abu Khader is concerned, Syrian President Bashar Assad is a “thief” who is leading Syria “to hell.” That doesn’t mean he will stop fighting for the regime. As an Alawite soldier serving in the Republican Guard, Abu Khader feels that he must keep fighting for Assad, a member of the same religious minority, in order to preserve his sect’s very existence in a country dominated by Sunni Muslims. He blames Assad for leading Alawites into a sectarian war but sees no alternative to supporting the President. Assad, says Abu Khader, “got us into this war to keep his authority. But as Alawites, we are forced to fight, because the opposition is all Sunnis, and they want to kill us all.”
As the killing as mounted, anger has mounted and made it far more difficult to set aside without a retribution bloodbath taking place after Assad falls.
I still think Assad is in a tough position. His forces are enduring heavy casualties that I don't think a Shia Foreign Legion paid for by Iran can fully replace.
Further, the rebels have to know that retribution will fall on them if they fail to win the bloody war. This will keep them fighting, I think, even if they aren't getting enough support from abroad.
But Assad has retreated from trying to hold most of Syria to focusing on his core Syria territory from the northwestern coastal areas down to the capital region.
And Russia and Iran have gone all in to supply Assad with the weapons and cash needed to keep fighting.
And even we are complicit in Assad's survival as our glorious "partner" in chemical weapons disarmament that is nothing but a diplomatic air defense shield for Assad to use while he kills his people into submission while the temporary disarmament goes on.
The administration assumed Assad was doomed because he was in a very bad position. We thought we could just watch and reap the benefits of Assad's fall without making any effort other than saying words.
Assad, Iran, and Russia understood that you don't win if you don't fight, and so decided to fight rather than give up. So here we are with Assad having a fighting chance of winning by breaking the will of his enemies to fight before his own forces crack under the strain of constant fighting and dying.
Regardless of who wins, there will be retribution as survivors seek revenge for the many deaths of friends and family that they witnessed.
The odds are with the rebels who have the numbers and sufficient weapons to keep fighting. But the war will be longer, more bloody, and more difficult to put behind everyone once it ends because we thought that we could pivot away from the Middle East and get good results with no efforts to make the results good.
And by failing to intervene when Assad was at his weakest (and when a more modest effort on our part could have gotten forces moving together against Assad), Assad might win. But we're supposed to believe this is smart diplomacy restoring our reputation in the Moslem world.
