I would not advise it. I think the current policy of uncoordinated deconfliction, or whatever it's referred to as, is when we fly over Syria and President Bashar al-Assad pretends not to mind. The reason why he's doing this is of course that it is coordinated with the Iraqi government, an entity we coordinate with extensively. The Iraqi government has spoken with the Syrian regime, and it speaks to them all the time about this. It's because President Assad benefits and has overwhelmingly benefited from U.S. air strikes on Syria to date.
That means that, yes, we're degrading ISIL, but we're making that settlement in Syria—a real settlement that solves this problem and doesn't generate more terrorism, extremism and suffering—that much more illusive.
I would say that for the moment it seems wise to focus activities in Iraq, to look at Syria, and look at not only what we're doing there. I think it's important to protect individuals along the way, but we need to protect all individuals, as many civilians as we can, minorities and majorities.
The problem until now has been that for the United States in particular and the western countries, their policies have been held up by extremists who say, “If you watch very closely since September 11, 2001, the west only kills Sunni Arabs. If you're anything else but Sunni Arabs you get every break and you receive even direct military assistance in exchange for a de facto alliance with the west.”
Such policies don't benefit the people of the region and they don't benefit western countries. It would be one thing if the Sunni-Shia or Sunni minority balance in the Middle East was 50-50. It's not even close to that. We need to be much more understanding of the political balance inside these countries and come up with a real solution that protects majorities and majority populations.
In Syria, unfortunately until now, I see that the bombing of ISIL has only strengthened and made more illusive that final settlement that truly takes care of this problem.