Another prime example that iron fisted secular dictators suppressed far more dangerous religious zealots all over the middle east.
How many times did we label someone a tyrant and help overthrow them, only for the country to turn into one big blood orgy?
The world was rather obviously better off with Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, Hosni Mubarak, Ali Abdullah Saleh and Bashar Al-Assad at the helm of their countries.
Trading ISIS for Al-Qaeda isn't a win for America or Syria.
Assad was a brutal dictator responsible for countless atrocities and war crimes. He would still have been the lesser of two evils during times of peace. But we were no longer living in such a world. Fact of the matter is that Assad had been unable to keep a lid on the powder keg, his country had already descended into utter chaos and bloodshed. By the time he was toppled by al-Sharaa, Syria was in an unsustainable zombie state, economically, socially, politically.
Simply put, Assad had outlived his usefulness and his presence only delayed the inevitable moment when the demographic Sunni majority would take over the country and exact revenge on the Alevites and all other minorities. Could Syria have remained in an artificial stasis for a couple more years under Assad? Probably. Was a full Assad victory on the table, the kind of victory after which his rule is able to sustain itself again (without constant backup by Russia bombers)? Absolutely not. Once his foes grouped and mounted a proper offense, the Assad regime collapsed entirely within days, which goes to show how hollowed out and baseless his rule had become.
What is happening in Syria now was always inevitable in the long run, the bandaid was simply ripped off quicker than the West had anticipated.