There are two words in English that may still have some currency in your stomping grounds: Western betrayal.
If we must still suffer hearing about the incomparable bravery of a handful of people with clandestine printing presses in Copenhagen and Brussels, and about how the Free French Forces were the fourth-largest of the Allies in 1945, then I suggest you get used to hearing about how the YPG fighters are liberal, democratic and pluralistic heroes.
Firstly, where did you arrive at this figure? Is it pre-Civil War? Even the lower bound would be more than four times higher than the non-political prison population. Assad was not “congratulated” for detaining some 200,000 people during the course of the war and murdering more than 10,000 of them.
Secondly, where do Saudi Arabia and Jordan fit in among the foreign sponsors? You are actually confirming my argument that direct U.S. intervention was necessary rather than “leading from behind”. One can infer that given the lessons of Operation Cyclone, the U.S. objective was never to establish a strong, liberal democratic state in Syria, but to set it ablaze and make it ungovernable by Assad and Khamenei. If the objective was the latter, then Operation Timber Sycamore was the most efficient means of doing so.
Thirdly, the primary Western interest in the Syrian Civil War is preventing spillover, including Islamist terrorism. The PKK/PYD has made itself very useful in that regard, by establishing a truce of sorts with Assad, and fighting Daesh. Of course, we will reap the whirlwind of an ethnic war for Kurdish independence, a political struggle for leadership of the Kurds whether independent or not, continued sectarian war between Sunni and Shia, and a struggle between the unitary states in question and the centrifugal forces of autonomy and outright secession.
As Americans made clear in 1918 and 1945, they care little for unfinished business so long as they are protected by two great oceans. As the British learned over a period of centuries, dabbling in “offshore balancing” not only worsens the carnage and destruction, but it usually opens the gates to the next existential threat.
As for Afghanistan, “victory” is possible so long as the definition of that victory is restricted. There will be no strong and friendly state in Afghanistan (there never was a strong Afghan state to begin with), but there can be an autonomous client region in the north, not unlike the KRG in Iraq.
Lastly, none of your points alter the fact that the liberation of Syria and its reconstitution as a liberal democracy, would have required a major U.S. national commitment on the order of those it has made to France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Taiwan and South Korea. You will note that the Special Operations Executive or its post-1945 iterations did not liberate Europe from either of its 1939 occupiers.
I would enjoy seeing the relative success in Tunisia be replicated beyond its borders, but it may well be short-lived and due to unique local factors.
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