war criminals in the world is Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. His military has completely disregarded the welfare of civilian populations when trying to take back parts of the country that had fallen into rebel hands.

What independent evidence of these alleged war crimes do you have? From what I can see Aleppo was a ruin before the government forces took back the region. Within weeks of government control, citizens had started to move back to Aleppo and rebuild the city. It was possible to circulate in the streets and celebrate holidays. On the other hand, when the US retook Mosul and Raqqa, there was massive air bombing and mass torture and more white phosphorus. How one can blame Assad when one's own military is guilty of war crimes (illegalmunitions, mass murder of civilians), just waving them off as "collateral damage" astonishes me.

While Bashar al-Assad's father was a ruthless man with considerable blood on his hands, there's no indication that his Western-educated ophthalmologist son shares any of Haffez's bloodlust. Indeed, it was Bashar's older brother, Basell who studied at the military academy and trained to become a future head of state.

You yourself write:

East Ghouta is under the political control of hard line Salafi militias such as the Saudi-backed Army of Islam and the Syrian Conquest Front (formerly the Nusra Front), which dream of sweeping into Damascus and turning Syria into a Taliban utopia for fundamentalist Islam. Pro-regime newspapers maintain that East Ghouta militias in the past couple days have launched intensive mortar fire on the capital of