That used to be the reasoning for not minding the Assads so much - dictators they might be, crushing opposition relentlessly and if need be bloodily, but Syria was stable and safe for minorities and foreigners as long as they didn't go up against the regime. Some of my friends went there to study Arabic. But after four years of this war, you can't just go back to how things used to be. If the Iranians and Hezbollah can maintain enough influence to protect the Shi'ites of Syria after the war, that would be good, but as for Assad himself, he's gone way too far to come back from. He's massacred far too many Sunnites to be viable again. As for the Christians, I very much doubt those will be coming back in any significant numbers, any more than the Iraqi ones.

Except the Kurds. But sorry, protecting minorities doesn't give you a get out of jail free card for massacring majority populations. That kind of reasoning is what creates states like the Islamic Republic of Iran, or even worse, Iraq.

I'm not sure General Sherman should be a role model to anyone. The outcome of the American Civil War wasn't some kind of glorious victory - it was staggering numbers of dead Americans on a scale only comparable to the World War losses for some European countries. But even if you look beyond that, the biggest problem of all in Syria is that there are too many sides, and none with the weight to win decisively in the end, as the Union inevitably did. Russia doesn't merely need to give Assad some support, it would have to fight the whole war for him and then keep forces on the ground to keep him in power. Hard to see how that is in anyone's interest, including Russia's.