Not blessed with foresight.

The American ruling class, that is.

Or with a vestigial morality, it appears.

“Had Western powers, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey overthrown Syria, an al-Qaeda-style government would have seized power. It would have combined with ISIS-held territories to form a massive and violent caliphate with all of the arms presently held by the Syrian Arab Army. Surrounding nations would have collapsed as a result, and been integrated into the savage caliphate. This terroristic government would have annihilated millions of moderate Muslims and religious minorities,” Sen. Black asserted.

He went on to say: “Had the West and its Arab allies succeeded in toppling Syria, I am convinced that Europe would now be threatened by jihad waged not by isolated terrorists, but by massive armed forces. In 2016, I went to Palmyra right after it was liberated by the Syrian armed forces. When I spoke to the pilots and aircrew standing by an attack aircraft, I told them that they were not only fighting to defend Syria but that they were defending the entire civilized world.”^[1]

There’s nothing fanciful about Sen. Black’s assessment. Removal of Assad and defeat of the Syrian Arab Army would have been an unmitigated, far-reaching disaster and nothing would have stood in the way of just such a nightmare as Black envisioned had the Syrians not fought back and Russia, Syria, and Hezbollah come to their aid.

Sorry about your mom.

All of this would be balanced by a sensible, moral person against the asinine “Assad must go” policy that was, so help me God, official U.S. policy. But Dubya, Theophrastus van Obongo, Donald “el Cid” Trump, Her Nickiness, and Mike “Energizer Bunny” Pompeo love that there “regime change” garbage and if hundreds of thousands have to be shot, raped, blinded, crippled, eviscerated, burned, tortured, beheaded, kidnapped, rendered homeless, or vaporized then it’s just an unavoidable (but acceptable) cost of doing business in “our” pursuit of “freedom” and graciously instructing a backward world on “our democracy” and the benefits of enlightened American ways.

Notes
^[1] "Sen. Richard Black to ST: U.S. has established 17 bases in Syria without the slightest lawful justification for doing so." Interview by Basma Qaddour, The Syria Times, 11/22/18 (emphasis added).