> Assad, Iran, and Russia Yup, they seem to believe that they have some strong interests in common. First cut, from the campaign and the terrorists attacks, t

> Assad, Iran, and Russia Yup, they seem to believe that they have some strong interests in common. First cut, from the campaign and the terrorists attacks, the US is mostly interested in stopping terrorism, in particular just ending ISIS. For that, a guess so far is that Assad, Iran, and Russia see no real gain and a lot of pain in the back side from ISIS and will be eager enough to see the US, Turkey, Baghdad, if it is now not too close to Iran, and maybe even Assad kill off ISIS. How far Assad, Iran, and Russia can get with a coalition for geography, power, and money I don't know; my guess is that once ISIS is dead, the US will have more important policy items than Assad, Iran, and Russia in the Mideast and will have friends in Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, and Israel. Just from a glance at a map, easy enough to understand why Russia might want a warm water port. E.g., the US has warm or even hot water ports all along both coasts and the Gulf of Mexico with all of those ports a lot of deep water away from adversaries. There may be some neo-cons around who never want to pass up an opportunity for another foreign advanture and saw Trump's shooting 59 cruise missiles as a big day for neo-con goals -- here I believe that the neo-cons will be wrong. I hope Trump still wants to stay the heck out of foreign adventures, be President of the US and not the world (his saying "God bless the world" alone is okay), stop Assad from using gas, kill off ISIS, organize an effort in the Mideast, with funding from the Saudis and Gulf states, for a refugee area, help draw new lines to keep the Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds separated, get all that done quickly, and then just come home and concentrate on jobs, the wall, trade deals, replacing Obamacare, getting the economy going, e.g., fast enough to generate the needed tax revenue, energy independence, etc. Trump has talked a lot about the $6 T or so we have spent in the Mideast, and I hope and believe that he won't spend even another $1 T there -- his big infrastructure program is supposed to be only $1 T. If we throw $1 T at a time over and over at the Mideast, after a while it adds up to real money we would have liked to have spent here. > Both sides have to figure out an arrangement that ends up benefiting the Syrian people. Kill off ISIS. Have a Sunni area cut from the current Syria and Iraq and get Assad, Baghdad, and Turkey to go along. Have a Kurdish area cut from Syria and Iraq, and tell the Turks that, no, we don't want a greater Kurdistan. Tell Assad he can rule half of Syria or none of it -- his choice.