I’m listening as CNN has the GOP presidential candidates engaged in a lively debate over Syria and whether or not we should focus on “taking out” Bashar Assad.
 
 
The ill-informed, and the RINOS (I’m lookin at you John Kasich), insist that Syria’s president has to go. The more astute (thank-you Ted Cruz!) know better.
 
Yes, Assad is a dictator. And like all dictators, the actions he takes are always predicated on one thing: maintaining power. In this he’s no different that Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi and Hosni Mubarak.
 
But the fact is, those “bad guys” actually represented the elusive “moderate Muslims” we’re always searching for. All of them acted as very effective restraints on the radical elements of Islam. Now that they’ve been “taken out,” the Middle East – as Donald Trump so inelegantly put it – is just a big mess.
 
Just last month a top Democrat(!) was pointing out exactly that ~ Islamic State Wouldn’t Be So Powerful if U.S. Didn’t Topple Dictators ~

Democratic National Committee Vice Chairwoman Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) told CNN’s Jake Tapper Friday that the Islamic State would not be a strong as it is today if the United States had not overthrown Middle Eastern dictators.
 
Gabbard voiced her opinion after being pressed by Tapper for suggesting the U.S. shouldn’t be working to topple “blood-thirsty tyrant” Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
 
“The same things were said about Saddam Hussein in Iraq; the same things were said about Gadhafi in Libya,” Gabbard said. “Look at the state of these countries today — they have been overrun and are filled with chaos.
 
“ISIS and Islamic extremist groups have grown stronger in these countries and are terrorizing the people there,” the congresswoman continued.

Amazing. Here’s one Dem who’s actually living in the real world!

Hussein(Iraq), Mubarak(Egypt) and Gadhafi(Libya) weren’t exactly angels, but all acted as restraining forces against the crazy Islamists. And that’s exactly why Bashar Assad should be left in place.

 
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Related:
Libya: Turns out the dictator was right

Syria: Is Assad winning?
“Putin the ‘Only Defender of Christianity” – Bashar Assad ~

“When I look at the present state of things in the world I realize that Vladimir Putin is the sole defender of Christian civilization one can rely on,” Assad said in an interview with French magazine Valeurs Actuelles.

(Don’t you find it telling that Obama wants to “take out” Assad…?)