there aren't many if at all better candidates for regime change than Assad. He is actively committing mass murder, indiscriminately shelling cities with barrel-spike bombs, people trapped underneath the rubble... a horrible way to live & die.
Given that the US has had a long-term interest with regime change regarding Syria, there are quite likely ulterior motives at play. If human rights or giving the citizens "freedom & democracy", we would have took out the 'House of Saud' a long time ago & didn't interfere when it came to managing their natural resources.
Regarding the recent regime changes & the overall Arab spring, Qatar has a very troubling interest in regime change as well. I think they want privatized dictatorship that also enforces Wahabbi ideology.
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The first battlefield test of Qatar’s proxy chain was in Libya, where there was a broad regional consensus — as well as U.S. support — to oust then-leader Muammar al-Qaddafi. Qatar, together with the UAE, had signed on to Western airstrikes against the regime. But Doha also wanted to help build up rebel capacity on the ground.
“They had to literally go to their address book and say, ‘Who do we know in Libya?'” says Krieg. “This is how they coordinated the Libya operation.” Doha lined up a collection of businessmen, old Brotherhood friends, and ideologically aligned defectors, plying them with tens of millions of dollars and 20,000 tons of arms, the Wall Street Journal later estimated. After a months-long war, the rebels took Tripoli and Qaddafi was dead. Doha’s clients found themselves among the most powerful political brokers in the new Libya. And long after the NATO strikes had ended, some Qatari-backed militias continued to receive support, says Bruguière.
Amid the initial euphoria of the Arab Spring, many expected the nascent summer protests in Syria to quickly topple the Assad regime. Presidents in Tunisia and Egypt had lasted just weeks before resigning, after all, and the world had quickly rallied to oust a more persistent Qaddafi. By August, Washington was calling on Assad to step down as well. Not long thereafter, Qatar began its Syrian operation, modeled on the Libyan adventure.
Like the tendering of a contract, Doha issued a call for bidders to help with the regime’s overthrow. “When we started our battalion [in 2012], the Qataris said, ‘Send us a list of your members. Send us a list of what you want — the salaries and support needs,'” Hossam, the Syrian restaurant owner, remembers. He and dozens of other would-be rebel leaders submitted a pitch. He doesn’t say how much his brigade received, but says his own fundraising efforts for humanitarian goods have yielded hundreds of thousands of riyals.
http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/09/30/the-case-against-qatar/
Al-Qaeda used charity fronts in the Bosnian wars, ISIS receives funding the same way too so I'm wondering how much fund-raising is really humanitarian.
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