It's easy to forget that just two years ago, President Obama was determined to bomb Syria and remove the Assad regime, and U.S. establishment institutions were working to lay the groundwork for that campaign. NPR began dutifully publishing reports from anonymous U.S. officials that Syria had stockpiled large amounts of chemical weapons; the NYT was reportingthat Obama was "increasing aid to the rebels and redoubling efforts to rally a coalition of like-minded countries to forcibly bring down" Assad; Secretary of State John Kerry pronounced that forced removal of Assad was "a matter of national security" and "a matter of the credibility of the United States of America."

Those opposed to the anti-Assad "regime change" bombing campaign argued that while some of the rebellion was composed of ordinary Syrians, the "rebels" the U.S. would arm and empower (i.e., the only effective anti-Assad fighters) were actually violent extremists and even terrorists aligned with Al Qaeda and worse. The people arguing that were invariably smeared as Assad apologists because this happened to be the same argument Assad was making: that the most effective fighters against him were jihadis and terrorists.