Presently Saudi Arabia is threatening an invasion by their forces if President Assad of Syria is not removed. Amazingly Saudi Arabia, one of the most brutal and repressive regimes on the planet, is demanding that another country must overthrow their government or they will invade. Beside the fact that it is questionable whether any country should determine the type of government in another country, it is almost laughable that despotic Saudi Arabia should be making such a demand.
Turkey is now firing on Kurdish and even Syrian government forces in Northern Syria in an effort to protect and to keep supply lines open to opposition forces. A few months ago Turkey, without any warning to the pilot, shot down a Russian plane over Syria that it said had entered Turkish air space for nearly 20 seconds. It appears that Turkey took that action because Turkish President Erdogan was upset that the oil being brought into Turkey by ISIS would be halted by Russian sorties and thus lucrative black market sales in oil would be disrupted as well as the continued funding for that terrorist organization.
Russia by any measure has made impressive gains by helping Syrian government forces turn the tide of the civil war in the government's favor. Also, the Russian/Syrian collaboration has led to a crippling of ISIS and other terrorist groups in Syria. So you might think that the advances against ISIS in Syria would be welcomed by the US and western governments. Unfortunately the US and its allies are not so much concerned about ISIS as they are concerned about their major goal of destroying Assad and the government in Syria.
The destruction of Assad's government would create a power vacuum leaving the country in the hands of terrorist groups like ISIS. We have seen what happened in Libya when the US and NATO allies helped overthrow the Gadaffi regime there. What emerged was something more terrible than what had previously existed. Libya is in a civil war with forces like ISIS, Al Qaeda, and other terrorist groups battling each other and with various war factions. The country, is in short, a complete disaster. We also have seen the civil war that emerged in Iraq after the US invaded that country. Iraq is at present broken into pieces with Iraqi government forces battling ISIS. Until recently, the Iraqi government had lost a great deal of the country to terrorist forces. So you might hope that the US and its allies would realize that intervention, destabilization, and even invasion to overthrow governments in the Middle East have left something far more terrible in its aftermath. However that is only a hope and not a reality.
But what is evolving is the most dangerous time for the world since the Cuban Missile Crisis where the US and the Soviet Union came very close to using nukes against each other. The Saudis are threatening invasion and Turkey is bombing Northern Syria to try to halt the collapse of opposition forces there. Unfortunately these ill-conceived actions will only bring about a pro-longing of a deadly civil war in Syria and it is likely to involve a clash with Russia. Not only is Russia bombing terrorists daily but it has advisers on the ground in Syrian. If the Syrian civil war evolves into an invasion by allies of the US into Syria, there will likely be Russian losses and casualties. Russian President Putin will most likely retaliate militarily. The US and NATO will have to act if Turkish forces are attacked since Turkey is a NATO member.
So at present we have a perfect nightmare scenario unfolding in which the world could very easily be pushed into a war that will involve hundreds of millions of deaths and the destruction of economies world wide. It may even result in a massive human die off if the nuclear bombs unleashed create nuclear winter and eco-destruction.
So is removing Assad in Syria worth it? I'll let you decide.
Grant
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