Yet Washington still adheres to what the media outlet described as a "simplistic policy of 'Assad must go.'"
The US presumes that a "rebel government [in Syria] would attain instant legitimacy. To sustain this fiction, the rebels are painted as moderate, when in fact they are anything but. We forget that the core of Assad's support is the Shia/Alawite and Christian minorities in Syria – they will not survive retribution by rebel factions penetrated by extremists. Moderate Sunnis, upon whose support a viable new government might have been built, are now more likely to be found fleeing to Europe," the bi-monthly American magazine noted.
For this very reason Washington has launched a media campaign against Russia's efforts to tackle extremists in Syria. Yet, "the complaints against Russia are distractions at best. They do not in any way address solutions to either the Syrian civil war, or to the increasing consolidation of Islamic State as a state," the media outlet observed.
In 1995, "the United States realized that if a deal was to be struck, it could not simply support the Bosnian Muslims at the expense of the Bosnian Serbs. The success of a political deal also hinged on the credible threat of force against all parties, otherwise Russian-backed Serbs and US-backed Muslims would never bend," the media outlet explained.
The revamped approach resulted in the Dayton accords, which put an end to the Bosnian War.
