Opinion of Bashar Assad

[TNF]

ISIS isn't a revolutionary force, though. It's explicitly counterrevolutionary, as are all forms of right-wing political Islam. The Kurds have had a successful social revolution that has resulted not in the domination of right-wing political Islam, but instead secular, radically democratic, and participatory democracy. The Arab world has a long history of embracing, at times, both secular and left-wing leaders. The failure of those leaders in the immediate post-colonial period is what has allowed right-wing political Islam to fill the vacuum in the region, but that is by no means a permanent shift. Once revolutions get set in motion, they logically move from the right to the left, assuming they're not halted by counterrevolution (the areas controlled by ISIS and the military dictatorship in Egypt) or attacked and destroyed by outside forces.

The Middle East needs its own period of Jacobinism before anything like secular democratic politics can become the norm there. It hasn't had that, and as such, the forces that have thus far contended for power have been secular authoritarians and religious lunatics.

[Cory]

No, but they might destabilize enough of it to set off a region-wide second wave of revolutions. That's the best scenario here. Another wave of revolutionary activity to end ISIS and overthrow the Gulf monarchies.

You can't possibly believe that this would actually happen in real life.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

It should be obvious that not all countries have a political spectrum strictly modeled on the French Revolution.

[Associate Justice PiT]

No, but they might destabilize enough of it to set off a region-wide second wave of revolutions. That's the best scenario here. Another wave of revolutionary activity to end ISIS and overthrow the Gulf monarchies.

     The odds of this happening are roughly equivalent to the odds of the entire region being abducted by aliens. I would prefer the latter myself.

[Murica!]

ISIS isn't a revolutionary force, though. It's explicitly counterrevolutionary, as are all forms of right-wing political Islam. The Kurds have had a successful social revolution that has resulted not in the domination of right-wing political Islam, but instead secular, radically democratic, and participatory democracy. The Arab world has a long history of embracing, at times, both secular and left-wing leaders. The failure of those leaders in the immediate post-colonial period is what has allowed right-wing political Islam to fill the vacuum in the region, but that is by no means a permanent shift. Once revolutions get set in motion, they logically move from the right to the left, assuming they're not halted by counterrevolution (the areas controlled by ISIS and the military dictatorship in Egypt) or attacked and destroyed by outside forces.

The Middle East needs its own period of Jacobinism before anything like secular democratic politics can become the norm there. It hasn't had that, and as such, the forces that have thus far contended for power have been secular authoritarians and religious lunatics.

https://libcom.org/news/rojava-people%E2%80%99s-war-not-class-war-25122014
Just an article on the supposed "social revolution" in Kurdistan

[ingemann]

Obviously an uber-HP. ISIS doesn't change that.

^^^^

"Lesser evil" people can go f**k themselves.

Yes clearly the citizens of USSR should have done their best to sabotage the Red Army, while it fought Germany.

In the real world the lesser evil is always better, and while Assad and his regime is horrible, at least it's still better than a bunch of slave holding, genocidal, pillaging, marauding rapists.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Terrible. I don't think we should be interested in propping a fake stability in the Middle East which only leads to further issues downstream.

[ingemann]

Terrible. I don't think we should be interested in propping a fake stability in the Middle East which only leads to further issues downstream.

Yes we should do our best to help the genocide of 30-40% of the Syrian population on the way.

More seriously USA are not propping up fake stability in Syria, USA and its allies (including the European one, but especially the Middle Eastern ones) are doing their best in destabilise Syria. If we didn't supported the rebels  to greater and lesser degree, the regime would likely have crushed them by now, and a lot fewer people would be dead and ISIS would still be a small terrorist group in Iraq.