[over the mountain]

Originally Posted by That Guy

russia's there to help fight back the moderate rebels (since we're working on ISIS, they rather not waste their time with that. I don't think they want land there, but they want a friendly government, and if assad falls, they don't see anyone else to fill that vacuum and be receptive to them.

syria's such a cluster at this point though. there wasn't a lot of support for the moderates early, so now there's tons of hard line islamists fighting there, and if we bomb assad, we help isis, if we bomb isis we help assad. and no matter who we try to give weapons too, everyone ends up getting them since the secularists/moderates/hardliners are all kind of mixed, and everyone's doing things you'd rather not hear about. I have no idea how you fix that.

makes you wish we left Saddam in power to keep the balance of power in the unstable region stable or at least in check.