I don’t really care about what kind of muslim Assad is, it is the fact that he is a genocidal socialist dictator guilty of killing US soldiers in Iraq that really bothers me.
Alawites did not kill US soldiers. Sunnis did. A lot of the Sunni rebels fighting Assad now were involved in killing GI's. Heck - Iraqi Sunnis who attacked GI's are now in Syria trying to topple Assad. We told Assad to have his army fight Sunnis in order to prevent them from crossing over to Iraq to fight GI's. Given the difficulty he's having in suppressing the Sunni rebellion, it's pretty clear why he balked. (He probably figured we were cynically using that ploy to lure him into a domestic quagmire so as to topple him). Note that I'm no Assad sympathizer. Before 9/11 and the response to that event from Sunnis worldwide showed the unappeasable cruelty and ferocity of Sunni public opinion, I would have cheered this Sunni rebellion. Sunni Islam has finally shown its hand, and we are better off for knowing it, despite all the casualties we've sustained.