Re: ISIL War in Iraq and Syria II
The point of these articles is that Assad would be replaced by another, more obedient and flexible member of his circle, not by the pretty much decimated opposition. Theoretically, the central government is nowadays strong enough to survive such a change, but there's simply no reason to risk your entire presence in Syria and the stability of your alliances, because Damascus refused an advantageous contract to a Russian oligarch because she refuses to abandon the project of recapturing Idlib. This is just wishful thinking with no basis on reality.
Regarding Obama, his verbal accusations against the Syrian government and more importantly the military intervention against Libya may have played a role at fueling the uprising, but it was certainly not the decisive factor. The Syrian Civil War is not analogous to the Shiite revolution in Iraq, which was partly sparked by Washington's misleading promises of help. Finally, the assistance provided to the rebels certainly prolonged the conflict, but I'm not sure why you view this as a negative criticism against the American foreign policy. It allowed Washington to watch several hostile entities, like Iran, Hezbollah, Syria, Russia and Salafists to fight against each other, wasting huge amounts of human and material resources, with minimal repercussions for America. If he had neither reinforced the opposition nor imposed economic sanctions, the rebellion would have probably been squashed in much fewer years and Syria would have by now recovered most of her strength. An invasion would have been diplomatically very difficult, would cost billions of money, would sink the popularity of his presidency and would encourage all the aforementioned actors to target US marines instead of each other. After all, this quite pragmatic policy is also pursued by the current administration, which confirms its significant benefits over the alternative options.