Why America should team up with Bashar al-Assad's regime

It's like Game of Thrones, Middle East edition

Bashar al-Assad
(Image credit: (AP Photo/Remy de la Mauviniere))

We skeptics of intervention in Syria have been proven right. As America and five of its Arab allies launch airstrikes against Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and another extremist rebel group in Syria for the first time, it's worth remembering how we ended up in this position.

As bad as Bashar al-Assad is, many of the rebels fighting him are worse. A great many have now fully metastasized into ISIS, a ruthlessly violent extremist group wreaking havoc not only in Syria, but Iraq too, and threatening to become a base for training jihadists and launching terrorist attacks all over the world.

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Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry

Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry is a writer and fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. His writing has appeared at Forbes, The Atlantic, First Things, Commentary Magazine, The Daily Beast, The Federalist, Quartz, and other places. He lives in Paris with his beloved wife and daughter.