For them, the Syrian government and its allies are in the historically-politically-ethically retrograde camp, while the insurgents and their American, Turk, Gulf, and Israeli allies are in the historically-politically-ethically progressive camp. Though its adherents sometimes avoid saying so directly, the politico-ethical logic of this position is to want the actually-existing insurgent forces to win, to overthrow and replace the Baathist government. In their rhetoric to liberal and leftist audiences, this usually gets sublimated into an imperative that the U.S. and the West, for "humanitarian" reasons only, supply whatever resources and assistance needed to make that happen.
Better that the Syrian state win, or better that the insurgents win. These are the two positions. There aren't ten of them. War narrows choice. Here, the principal axis of difference is between incompatible assessments of the dominant pollical character of the uprising: democratic civil war or jihadi-proxy imperialism.
In some other conflict, on some other planet, there may be a way to fudge the choice, but in this theater, at this conjuncture, with these players, at this stage of the fight, it's down to one or the other. That may be the one thing both sides agree on. To be neutral would mean to be uninterested in who wins this fight. Those who are entirely unaware of the world, NGOs, and professed pacifists may claim such neutrality (though most such claims don't withstand scrutiny), but that's an improbable attitude for a leftist to take on this issue.
So these are irreconcilable positions, seeking opposite resolutions to an important real-world conflict. Each side considers the other's political judgement deadly seriously mistaken. So each side has to give the evidence and the arguments, demonstrate that its sources are reliable and the other side's not so much. Those who resent the fact that the Syria-Russia military alliance has driven the jihadis from Aleppo and prevented the overthrow of the Syrian government, and want to continue claiming there's a revolution in Syria dominated by indigenous democratic forces can make their case.
But they are not making that case by calling people "Assad (and/or Putin) apologists" and "conspiracy theorists ." That is not making an argument; it's avoiding one. It's an attempt to shame and shut up one's political interlocutors, not respond to them.
I, and I think, leftists who share my position can understand the rejection of Baathist authoritarianism that might prompt other leftists to favor an anti-Assadist position, but the charges that we who don't are in league with Assad or Putin are so blatantly diversionary as to be embarrassing. Left politics doesn't do comic-book villains, and no leftist should be ashamed of saying about Bashar al-Assad what the "leftist and atheist" rebel supporter (quoted below) is unashamed to say about ISIS: "not that big of a monster."
We recognize that many Syrians are hungry for greater democracy, and rightfully pissed-off at the Syrian government. Anyone who has any familiarity with the region knows the gnawing indignities suffered by people living under such regimes. We also recognize that Baathist Syria has been a stable, secular polity embodying substantive progressive achievements: tolerance of various deeply-rooted religious communities, widespread social security, educational opportunity, and gender equality, etc. It remains--the mortal sin for the Americans and Israelis--an important ally of the Palestinians (an alliance some seem to think they can pressure Assad to betray). It is, in short, with all the attendant contradictions, the last bastion of post-colonial, secular, quasi-socialist, republican Arab nationalism.
That , we contend, is the fault the jihadi uprising wants to correct. Its objective is not to correct Assad's authoritarianism with democracy; it's to change the Syrian "regime"--deconstruct the state, really--in ways favorable to jihadi and foreign interests, ways that are guaranteed to destroy those more progressive elements of Baathist policy.
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