Throughout the five-year-long Syrian conflict, there seem to be two different realities depending on what you're reading. One one side, media outlets like Al Jazeera – funded by the same government that was caught funding ISIS – as well as establishment US newspapers have consistently portrayed the Syrian government and its army as the villains. Once Russia joined the fray late last year, their actions in Syria, according to these and similar sources, were to blame for most civilian deaths as well as various war crimes. However, many alternative media sites, as well as Russian and Syrian outlets, have painted a very different picture, highlighting the connections of the Islamic State to the United States and Israel as well as the murderous tactics of the US-funded "moderate rebels." Based on the massive divide in perspectives, it becomes exceedingly difficult to find out not just what is actually happening in Syria, but why it is happening.

In 2012, when the Syrian conflict was just a year old, the presidential debate between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama offered a shockingly honest look at why there is a war in Syria. Mitt Romney explained that "Syria is Iran's only ally. It's the route for them to arm Hezbollah in Lebanon, which threatens Israel. Seeing Syria remove Assad is a very high priority for us. We need to coordinate our effort with our allies, particularly Israel. We need to make sure the insurgents there are armed." Obama, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, echoed this, saying "Everything we're doing [in Syria] we're doing with our partners in the region, including Israel, which obviously has a huge interest in seeing what happens in Syria."