Guest wrote:
> Just curious: how is Putin supporting Assad different than Reagan
> supporting Saddam in the 1980's? Both of them were extremely
> brutal and committed horrific atrocities, with the protection of a
> superpower allowing them to get away with anything they
> wanted. Saddam could match Assad, perhaps even exceed him in
> brutality.
It's an interesting question, but I think that there are differences.
We might as well start with our alliance with Josef Stalin's Russia
in WW II. Stalin had killed millions of people brutally, including
millions of people by starvation in Ukraine.
But we allied with Stalin because he was the lesser of two evils.
In the 1980s, Iran had kidnapped our diplomats, and was practically
declaring war against us and Israel. Prior to Saddam's use of
chemical weapons in 1988, Saddam was considered the lesser of two
evils.
Russia is using the same argument -- that al-Assad is the lesser of
two evils, the other evil being ISIS. The problem with the Russian
argument is that ISIS didn't exist when Russia began supporting
Assad. The other "evil" was peaceful protesters, so al-Assad was
the greater of the two evils.
Genocide by al-Assad, supported by Putin and Iran, has not only
created ISIS, but has also resulted in millions of Syrian refugees
headed into Europe. It's really amazing how disastrous these people
have been to the world, with complete impunity. If this kind of
disaster had been predicted five years ago, no one would have believed
it. It makes it easier to understand how Hitler got away with it for
so long.