The U.S. government has been trying to overthrow the Syrian government since at least 2011.  The Obama administration attempted to go to war in 2013, but was rejected by the American people.

When John Kerry said at a news conference that there was nothing Assad could do to avoid war other than give up his weapons, Putin stepped in and took advantage of Kerry’s flippant comment.  He brokered a deal to track Assad’s weaponry in exchange for avoiding war.  Russia does not want the Assad regime to go down, as it would just further destabilize the region.

The Obama administration went ahead with the war anyway, but just in a more covert way.  Even though there was no congressional declaration of war (or even approval in this case), that has not stopped presidents from going to war for many decades.

Assad has been accused of using chemical weapons against civilians on multiple occasions as an excuse for U.S. bomb dropping.  There has been little to no evidence that Assad is guilty of using these chemical weapons.  If anything happened, it was likely his opposition in Syria who were trying to frame him.  Worse, it is possible that the U.S. government and/ or other governments (such as the U.K.) were involved in the framing.  Whenever the U.S. and U.K. see that Assad is holding or gaining power in Syria, there is conveniently a chemical weapons attack supposedly perpetrated by Assad.

The recent missile attacks by the U.S. against Syria could have been much worse if not for a guy nicknamed Mad Dog keeping the crazies inside the Trump administration in check.

Bashar al-Assad is the son of Hafez al-Assad, who was president of Syria from 1971 to 2000.  Bashar al-Assad went to medical school and then went on to specialize in ophthalmology at the Western Eye Hospital in London.  He only was called  back to Syria in the mid 1990s to become the heir apparent of his father after Assad’s older brother died in a car accident.

While this does not mean that Assad does not crave political power, it is obvious that his original intentions were not to be an overtly political figure.  Most people seeking political power when they are young do not become an eye doctor.

Assad was mostly praised by the Western media in previous decades.  Diane Sawyer interviewed him and had nice things to say about him.  There are pictures of John Kerry dining with Assad and their respective spouses before Kerry turned on him as part of the Obama administration.

Assad got on the naughty list of the U.S. establishment, and now he is called an animal, a terrorist, and almost everything else nasty that can think of.  Of course, we almost never hear these terms used against U.S. politicians.  If they are used against Trump, it isn’t because he dropped bombs on innocent people.  It is because he sent out a rude tweet.

Syria has been one of the few places in the Middle East where Christianity was allowed to thrive.  Incidentally, Iraq was another place where Christianity thrived up until the U.S. invasion.  Christianity is also tolerated in Iran.  For some reason, the U.S. government, with the support of a majority of self-identified Christian Americans, like to overthrow secular dictators and eliminate the Christian populations in these places.  Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia gets U.S. support.

It really is odd.  It just shows the irrationality that has prevailed with the out-of-control U.S. empire.  It’s bad enough that there is so much U.S. interventionism when it comes to foreign policy.  But the policies themselves are completely irrational.  We don’t even know which side we are on half the time.  Many times, we (meaning the U.S. government) are playing both sides.

I think Assad is probably one of the least bad people when it comes to dictators.  He may be one of the least bad people amongst all political leadership in the world.  He has actually tried to keep Syria together by protecting innocent people who have been terrorized by the thugs that have invaded the country due to the U.S. war in Iraq and the attempted overthrow of the Syrian government by the U.S. establishment.

Any crimes committed by the Assad regime pale in comparison to the crimes of U.S. presidents and those who surround them.