Should the U.S. work more with Bashar Al-Assad in the fight against ISIS?

[politicus]

At this point yes. The alternative is worse and the civil war needs to end - it threatens to destabilize the whole region and the surrounding contries can not cope with the influx of refugees. Since it can only end with either an Assad victory or Sunni extremists taking control Assad is by now the lesser evil, as absurd as it sounds.

Best case scenario is probably that the Kurdish areas are secured autonomy as part of a peace deal - and some presence of UN-forces be arranged to protect them + secure home coming refugees.

[politicus]

Generally most of you underestimate how destabilizing this conflict is. This is a conflict that needs to end ASAP and this obviously require that one of the parties win.

Also, forget about Russia in this context, it is utterly irrelevant compared to the severity of the situation.

[politicus]

Unfortunately, most moderate Sunnis in Syria have either fled, been killed, are too young/old/incapacitated/subdued to fight, not really 'moderate' at all or allying with one of the two sides as a lesser of two evils situation.

True, that is a surprisingly naive proposal from Thomas Friedman.