It required something so obvious to everyone, like our untenable position in Syria, to set the dominoes into motion. And we did it to ourselves by allowing a competing nation to simply take the mantle of moral authority by backing the wrong party. Classic overreach.
This is only the beginning. There's nothing we can do to prevent Russia from establishing a significant presence in the ME. Next comes the Chinese - what's to stop them from landing 1m or more PLA in Syria/Iran (with those country's invitations)?
Nothing, nada, zilch. Like I've said on other threads, the events leading to Syria didn't happen today, last year or even 5 years ago. They happened generations ago when the USA lost sight of the real requirements to maintaining global peace.
Electing Hussein was simply the symptom of a much deeper problem. It's the people themselves who allowed the system to become so corrupt that we are now harvesting the bitter fruit.
This is our wake up call that the bill is now coming due.
That post should be required reading.