Hope this is the right place, and that i ask an open enough question. Because there is not a simple answer, but now that there has risen a news covered conflict in syria, it would be nice to know how it got to this point before america tried to get involved.
I'd like to pre-emptively remind all everyone that AskHistorians restricts all discussions to events more than 20 years old. Stay focussed on the history of Syria, not current events.