If you thought the political and humanitarian situation in Syria couldn't be any worse, you are about to be proven horribly wrong.
Unless several nation pull back from the brink right now, the Syrian Civil War is about to turn into a region-wide war that could plunge much of the Muslim world into open warfare, and could possibly even lead to a military confrontation between Russia and NATO.
Yes, it really is that dangerous.

It all starts with Turkey and Saudi Arabia.

Turkey will supply ground forces to an anti-Islamic State coalition in Syria and will allow Saudi Arabian strike missions against the militants from its air bases, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said in an interview published Saturday.
The Saudis have already visited the Turkish base at Incirlik, where U.S. warplanes are launching attacks against the Islamic State, in preparation for the new deployment, Cavusoglu told the pro-government Turkish newspaper Yeni Safak after speaking at an international security conference here.
Turkey’s commitment comes after Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates said they would supply Special Forces troops as part of the U.S.-led coalition.

On the surface that sounds OK. More countries committing to ending ISIS would be a good thing.
The problem is that "anti-ISIS coalition" is just a code phrase.
To borrow a football metaphor, it's like when Peyton Manning is about to take the snap from center and he shouts "Omaha". Peyton isn't thinking about the wide-open spaces of Nebraska, while Turkey and Saudi Arabia aren't thinking about defeating ISIS.

Turkey and Saudi Arabia are thinking about the Kurds and Assad.

Saudi Arabia took its first step in preparing an invasion of Syria by moving ground forces and fighter aircraft to Turkey’s Incirlik base.
Turkish foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu announced the move on Saturday, just two days after Saudi Arabia said the decision to send its forces into Syria was “final” and irreversible.

Saudi Arabia's Foreign Minister made their intentions perfectly clear.

"Bashar al-Assad will leave - have no doubt about it" Saudi Arabia's Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir told CNN. "He will either leave by a political process or he will be removed by force."

Obviously KSA isn't concerned all that much with ISIS. For them it's all about regime change.
As for Turkey, they want Assad gone as well, but their primary concern is the Kurds.

Turkey shelled positions held by a U.S.-backed Kurdish militia in northern Syria for a second day on Sunday, drawing condemnation from the Syrian government, whose forces are advancing against insurgents in the same area under the cover of Russian airstrikes.

Turkey has also shelled Assad regime forces.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had previously demanded that Obama choose between Turkey and the Syrian Kurds, and was shocked when Obama refused to abandon the Kurds.

If you think that Russia's bombing has been bad for civilians, just wait for the Saudis.

The Saudis have been taken to task repeatedly by humanitarian groups for the massive civilian death toll of their air war on Yemen, and for using their naval blockade of the Yemeni coast to limit food shipments into the country, which relies almost exclusively on food imports.
Indeed, a recent UN report concluded the Saudis have been “systematically” targeting civilians in Yemen, declaring their behavior a crime against humanity. That was followed up by a Saudi pledge to seek US and British help in limiting civilian casualties. It is unclear what’s resulted from that, however, except the letter ordering aid workers away from those civilians.

Quite simply, an invasion of Syria by Turkey and Saudi Arabia with the aim of overthrowing Assad would run head-long into Russian and Iranian armies, plus their proxies. The outcome would be beyond messy. It would likely spill over borders.

How we got here

What happened to the Assad regime that seemed about to collapse last summer? Putin happened.

Three months into his military intervention in Syria, Russian President Vladimir Putin has achieved his central goal of stabilizing the Assad government and, with the costs relatively low, could sustain military operations at this level for years, U.S. officials and military analysts say.….
"An attempt by Russia and Iran to prop up Assad and try to pacify the population is just going to get them stuck in a quagmire and it won't work," Obama said on Oct. 2. On Dec. 1, he raised the prospect of Russia becoming "bogged down in an inconclusive and paralyzing civil conflict."

Obama was wrong.
The turning point came when Turkey decided to shoot down a Russian jet and machine gun the pilot while he parachuted.

Russian airstrikes across northern Syria had been steadily shifting the epicenter of the war toward the corridor north of Aleppo since late November, in retaliation for Turkey's decision to shoot down a Russian warplane that it said violated its airspace.
As a result, Turkey's policy in Syria of bolstering rebels fighting Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime — and establishing a "safe zone" for displaced Syrians that might hinder the regime's efforts to take Aleppo — has been unraveling for months, and now appears to have been defeated entirely....
"This has to be Turkey's weakest position in Syria in years," David Kenner, Foreign Policy magazine's Middle East editor, noted on Twitter. "Shooting down of that Russian jet was a pivot point — backfired in a major way."

Instead of confronting Erdogan, Putin decided to hit Turkey where it hurts - it's Syrian regime change strategy.
The rebels in Aleppo have been cut off from their benefactors in Turkey. A rebel defeat here would make the dream of Syria regime change almost impossible, outside of a full-scale foreign military invasion.

Of course it hasn't been just Russia that has turned this around. Iran and its proxies in Iraq have done most of the heavy-lifting. Which brings up lots of questions about Obama's strategy that Americans should be asking.
For instance, who are we supporting?

Iraqi militias who once fought ISIS with U.S. help are now working with Russian and Iranian forces to crush American-backed rebels in the strategic Syrian city of Aleppo, two defense officials have told The Daily Beast.
At least three Shia militias involved in successful battles against ISIS in Iraq—the Badr Brigade, Kata’ib Hezbollah, and the League of the Righteous—have acknowledged taking casualties in fighting in south and southeast Aleppo province. U.S. defense officials confirmed to The Daily Beast that they believe “at least one” unit of the Badr Brigade is fighting in southern Aleppo alongside other Iraqi militia groups. Those groups are backed by Russian airpower and Iranian troops—and all of whom are bolstering President Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian Arab Army.
The presence of militias fighting on behalf of Assad—a dictator that the U.S. has pledged to depose—is yet another reminder of the tangled alliances that the United States must thread as it pursues seemingly contradictory policies in its battles against the self-proclaimed Islamic State. In Iraq, these Shia militias were battling on behalf of the U.S.-backed government. In Syria, they are fighting against an American-supported rebel coalition that includes forces armed by the CIA.
In other words: The forces the U.S. once counted on to take back Iraq’s cities are the same ones the Russians now are counting on to get Aleppo back. And those militias are fighting units of the American-backed Free Syrian Army—including the 16th Division, elements of Jaish al Nasr, and Sultan al Murad—according to Nicholas Heras, a research associate at the Center for a New American Security.

Our allies in the Battle of Aleppo are on both sides. How does one win a battle when you are arming and supporting both sides?
What's more, those "moderate" rebels that Washington likes to talk about, and that Russia is bombing, are mostly al-Qaeda terrorists and their allies.
Those same Shia militias we are backing at guilty of ethnic cleansing.

The paradox in U.S. foreign policy is that the current administration has shown a policy of partnering with Iran’s regime and even releasing the funds to the regime to back these militia, while at the same time creating conditions on the ground in Iraq where they can ethnically cleanse the Christian community, Dr. Walid Phares, who is an advisor to members of the U.S. Congress, said to The Foreign Desk.
In other words, Washington is backing and funding the ethnic cleansing of Christian minorities in Iraq, Phares said.

It seems pretty obvious that we are in over our heads and are simply to proud to admit it.
Sometimes there is no good guy that has a chance to win, and backing the lesser evil only makes you a lesser evil. Sometimes it simply isn't your business and you need to step back.
After 15 years of GWOT, every country we've touched has turned to sh*t. No one anywhere is better off. Nothing has been accomplished except for getting a lot of people killed. So far we've been incapable of learning from our failures. We no longer have that luxury.