In the wake about Obama's plan to target ISIL, I came upon this article by Michael Weiss:
https://now.mmedia.me/...
If you look around the net, you will see that for quite sometime this person has been pushing for toppling the Assad regime, and criticizes Obama for not doing so. No mention of the possibility of conflict with Iran as a result. I read the article and a few others by Weiss, all of which support military aggression in the region. While I abhor his conclusions, what disturbs me is that I don't find a lot of substantial rebuttal that matches his depth of analysis.
But what puzzles me even more...
was the first argument I found going against the toppling of the Syrian regime...on RedState!! Its politics being so far from my own, I have barely ever read anything on the site, and perhaps on the one occasion that I did the public comments were so reprehensible that I've avoided that site like the plague. Yet here is this article (posting below) that actually seems like a reasonable analysis, and from a self-proclaimed conservative website, actually counselling the current administration AGAINST leading us into another war?? Is it just because it is Obama who seems to be going in this direction? I am struggling to digest this information. I would be thrilled to discover that there are actually some on the "other side" who in fact support forbearance and careful thought before flexing military muscle. Even the comments below the article seemed pretty reasonable! Please, I'd like to get some insight on what is at work here:
http://www.redstate.com/...
Of course I understand that this was in response to Obama's strategy against ISIL, but a lot of the points made here seem to be accurate -- like the focus on Iraq. They don't go so far as to accept U.S. responsibility for fostering the conditions which allowed ISIS to emerge, by going to war against Iraq -- which is my somewhat limited understanding of what happened. But it doesn't point away from that conclusion either, and brings up some of the issues the US is likely to face if they attempt to utilize the Syrian rebels for the cause of working against ISIS (and even Weiss's article, which I find mostly vile, raises some good points in this regard as well).
I did find one website with some great background info on ISIS in general, and one short page addressing the Syrian rebels and why having backed them wouldn't have stopped ISIS (read all 7 myths):
http://www.vox.com/...
would like to see a lot more of this kind of information out there.