Opinion of Bashar Assad

[TNF]

There is an alternative to Assad that isn't ISIS.

Assad and ISIS alike are obviously bloodthirsty murderers who deserve anything that comes their way. Major HP. "Lesser evilism" in this instance is utterly disgusting, especially when there are clear and democratic alternatives in the region (like the Kurds) doing battle against both Islamism and autocracy.

[TNF]

There is an alternative to Assad that isn't ISIS.

Assad and ISIS alike are obviously bloodthirsty murderers who deserve anything that comes their way. Major HP. "Lesser evilism" in this instance is utterly disgusting, especially when there are clear and democratic alternatives in the region (like the Kurds) doing battle against both Islamism and autocracy.

     The Kurds aren't going to rule all of Syria, so that is a nonstarter.

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.

[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.