Europe, America and the Syrian crisis...games were being played.

Many thanks to Don Bacon for pointing this out.

NOTE:  This is all opinion.  I have no solid evidence to back my claims!

I've pushed back on many who claim that the Syrian crisis is the direct result of a US plan to topple the Assad regime.  I'm beginning to seriously wonder if I shouldn't reconsider.  While I've focused on the current drama I failed to remember the events that happened a few years ago that illustrate that backroom deals were being cut to install an acceptable "figurehead" and provide another legacy item for the President (beware a man that is trying to fill his resume for the ages).  Check this out via The Christian Scientist Monitor Dec 14, 2011...

The State Department official, Frederic Hof, told Congress on Wednesday that Assad's repression may allow him to hang on to power but only for a short time. And, he urged the Syrian opposition to prepare for the day when it takes control of the state in order to prevent chaos and sectarian conflict.
"Our view is that this regime is the equivalent of dead man walking," said Hof, the State Department's pointman on Syria, which he said was turning into "Pyongyang in the Levant," a reference to the North Korean capital. He said it was difficult to determine how much time Assad has left in power but stressed "I do not see this regime surviving."

More from the same article....

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton met in Switzerland last week with members of the Syrian National Council, an umbrella group of Assad foes, in a clear signal that the U.S. is willing to work with them.

But wait it gets better.  Who were these members of the Syrian National Council?  Don turned me onto a guy named Ghassan Hitto.  This is via Wikipedia...

Ghassan Hitto (Arabic: غسان هيتو‎; born 1963) was the first Prime Minister of an interim government established by the Syrian opposition National Coalition.[1][2] Born in Damascus into a Kurdish family, he left Syria to the U.S. in 1980, became a naturalized American citizen and worked as an information technology executive and lived in Texas until recently. In late 2012, he relocated to Turkey.[3] He was elected prime minister on 18 March 2013 by a narrow margin over former Syrian Arab Republic agricultural minister Assad Mustafa.[4] Hitto resigned on 8 July 2013.[5]

Ok.  Bear with me, I'll show you my thinking in a minute.  Now fast forward to today.  We have the most powerful military in the world unable to crush an opposition force that was originally armed with rifles and Toyota pickup trucks?

We've watched them "metastasize" into a formidable force that is conducting Battalion sized operations against the Iraqi Army?  We've all watched Syria spiral out of control and millions of people feeling to Europe?  This doesn't smell right.  So what is our boy Hof saying now?  Check this out from Foreign Policy...

Stop them damn pictures. I don’t care what the papers write about me. My constituents can’t read. But, damn it, they can see the pictures.”
Change “can’t” to “don’t” or “rarely,” and the plaintive words of the corrupt William Magear “Boss” Tweed in reaction to the scathing cartoons of Thomas Nast in 1870s New York City might just as easily be placed on the lips of President Barack Obama, as images of dead Syrian children washing up on Turkish beaches awaken a dormant American public to a humanitarian abomination and policy catastrophe. For an administration relying on public indifference to sustain a policy rich in rhetoric and devoid of action, the pictures are a damnable inconvenience.

What am I thinking?  I think we're seeing a mess that was at least partially created by the US.  I think to say that we have a failure in strategy is an understatement.

I think that the Arab Spring and the actions against Assad was coordinated between the US, France and the UK.  Why?  We thru Mubarak under the bus even though he was a staunch ally of the US.  Out of nowhere the Brits and the French went after the Libyan strongman even though he had thoroughly cooperated on nuclear disarmament just a few months before the attack.  And then we had Syria.  Out of nowhere it suddenly became a top administration policy to see him removed from office.  I'm beginning to believe that there was a plan to "transform" the Middle East.

The Middle East is a mess and its because Europe and America were playing games.