Syria's Assad doesn't care who he kills as long as he kills. Hence the barrel bomb:
Syrian army helicopters bombarded the northern rebel-held town of Al-Bab for a second day on Sunday, killing 20 people including four women when they dropped improvised barrel bombs on a market district, a monitoring group said. ...
[Barrel] bombs - explosive-filled cylinders or oil barrels - are usually rolled out of the back of helicopters and are rarely delivered with any accuracy.
Yeah. Anyone on the block is a target. So the Improvised Explosive Bomb joins the IED and all its variations as the simple way to kill a lot of people.
Our refusal to help the rebels significantly is achieving the amazing--a minority regime willing to slaughter its way to victory could actually win this war when a year ago the trajectory was defeat.
But no, our government assumed Assad was doomed and that we could get a cheap win with no effort other than a presidential statement that Assad must "step aside" that would make it look like we had a role.
Instead, Assad is willing to kill, Iran is willing to spend, and Russia is willing to risk relations with us to help Assad win.
I won't say that Assad will win this war. He still holds little of the country, is suffering heavy losses himself, relies on fairly few foreigners for offensive punch, and faces the majority of the population that wants him to go.
But if we had just supported those willing to fight--without needing to intervene ourselves directly--Assad would have been pushed aside.
And as I noted, Responsibility to Protect (R2P) died in Syria. Others have noticed, too.
