Washington DC thinks we are stupid, they really do.  The professional political class has yet to grasp the understanding that “WWW” as a prefix in the internet stands for “World Wide Web”.   We are quite capable of connecting, collecting and digesting information directly from the heart of the issues being debated.
Despite all the DC pontifications, obfuscations, and professional talking points to the contrary, we know in Syria there are two options, support Bashir Assad or support radical Islamists, that’s it.   There is no mysterious “moderate” third option; the “rebels” are radical islamists.
President Obama and  Republican Senator John McCain are making the same argument in 2014 toward Syria they both made in 2011 toward Libya.   2014’s Secretary of State, John Kerry, is merely repeating the 2011 meme sold by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton – the difference is within the audience.

In Libya 2011 there were two options, support Moamuar Kaddafi, or support radical Islamists under the nom de plume “rebels“.   The White House supported the “rebels“, Kaddafi was killed, and as a consequence right now in Libya chaos reigns as the islamists, now collected under the banner “Libyan Dawn”, are destroying the country.

How can McCain and Obama expect these pesky facts to go unnoticed?   As the Jerusalem Post accurately outlines:

[…]  After a week of talks and shuttle diplomacy, aside from Australia, no one has committed forces. Germany, Britain and France have either refused to participate or have yet to make clear what they are willing to do.

The Kurds will not fight for anything but Kurdistan. The Iraqi Army is a fiction. The Iraqi Sunnis support IS far more than they trust the Americans.

Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan will either cheer the US on from a distance, or in the best-case scenario, provide logistical support for its operations.

It isn’t just that these states have already been burned by Obama whether through his support for the Muslim Brotherhood and the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak and Muammar Gaddafi. And it isn’t simply that they saw that the US left them hanging in Syria.

They see Obama’s “strategy” for fighting IS – ignoring the Islamic belief system that underpins every aspect of its existence, and expecting other armies to fight and die to accomplish the goal while the US turns a blind eye to Turkey’s and Qatar’s continued sponsorship of Islamic State.

They see this strategy and they are convinced America is fighting to lose. Why should they go down with it? Islamic State is a challenging foe. To defeat it, the US must be willing to confront Islamism. And it must be willing to fight to win. In the absence of such determination, it will fight and lose, in the region and at home, with no allies at its side. (link)

We will not hear the details of a John Kerry ‘Mid-East coalition’ because the entities who would assemble within such a coalition (Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, UAE, Saudi Arabia and four Gulf States) know the entire U.S. campaign against ISIS is a farce.
ISIS, or as President Obama calls them NI-ISIL (Non-Islamic Islamists) are supported by, funded by, and aided by, Turkey and Qatar.
Turkey’s President Recep Erdogan views Sunni ISIS as a pure and righteous effort, and it is brutally obvious to Arabs and non-Arabs alike that President Obama supports the overall Sunni cause.
What Obama and Kerry are assembling is a list of nations who answered a poll tested question, “is ISIS a little too authentic about Islam by chopping up people“?
With a list of those states who say “yes, ISIS behavior a tad too extreme” in hand, Kerry/Obama are proclaiming they now own ‘a coalition’.
No, what they actually own is a list of countries who disagree with the methods of ISIS – but they don’t have a single Mid-East nation willing to put their blood on the document swearing to stop it.
The “Syrian moderates 2014” are as invisible as the “Libyan moderates 2011” and the support for them will deliver the same result, chaos.
It has been frequently stated, removing a dictator under such circumstances is akin to removing the zookeeper and leaving open the doors to the big cat cages.
Aesop’s fable also comes to mind.

Does President Obama really believe that removing Bashir Assad will lead to greater stability for the region including Jordan and Israel ?
Of course he doesn’t.
President Obama is well aware what the removal of Bashir Assad means to the Sunni majority, the ISIS majority.
President Obama knows that if Assad falls the larger consequences are a stronger Muslim Brotherhood, stronger Hamas, stronger coalition of hard-line islamists and a far weaker position for Jordan and others who would prefer secular moderation.
There is indeed an end goal in mind, but that end goal has little or nothing to do with ridding the Mid-East of Sunni ISIS.