If he does something wrong, it has to be because he's "in bed" with somebody, presumably catching and not pitching. (Really, why do people immediately make that kind of an assumption?)
There was early discussion of helping the "rebels." (Much better term than "insurrectionists", dontcha think?) That course of action was rejected, for good reason. Esp. once the rebels started to make gains. Why help the winning side if you don't need to?
The late discussion of helping the rebels only seriously occurred when the rebels started losing ground.
If the rebels lose ground and ultimately lose, two things definitely happen and a third and fourth might.
1. Assad stays in power. A reformer 5-6 years ago, he's now pegged as having been a ruthless dictator 5-6 years ago. Neocons were gunning for him then and so the easy knee-jerk reaction was to defend him. That would allow somebody we don't like for formal reasons to remain.
2. Iran and Hezbollah keep an ally, one who is both stronger in some sense and also more in their pockets. Russia's ally also wins. Turkey's ally loses, as does the Qataris' and Sa'udis'. This doesn't suit US geopolitical interests.
3. This might embolden Hezbollah or even Syria. Nothing consolidates power like denigrating an outsider or enemy. Israel might be under the gun and do the unthinkable.
4. There might be a purge of those who were rebels or supported the rebels. If there's a purge of Alawites we apparently don't care. But Sunnis? A majority of the population (mixing up "Sunni" with "Supporters of the rebels" in a kind of classic shift-the-terms fallacy). That, of course, would be termed genocide, even if a small portion of Sunnis were targeted for political and not ethnic or cultural reasons, and hit deeply at a fundamental, core principle: There are times when we're opposed to genocide.
Now, strictly speaking 1, 2, 3 and even 4 can be viewed as neocon goals (the neocons were all about the S. Sudan genocide when Powers was on an antigenocide campaign but failed to notice S. Sudan. "At times" didn't include that time.)
On the other hand, it's hardly a liberal position to defend dictators (okay, right-wing dictators, the Ba'ath Party being an uncomfortable mix of Arab nationalism, fascism, and socialism). Nor is support for Iran an automatic progressive position. While it seems that being anti-Israel is sometimes a progressive position, that's only because that contingent is loudest. And a purge of Sunnis is a "genocide" that progressives could unite against.
Only later would we care that Islamists form a large part of the "resistance" and later demand a seat at government. Or would we care that the Islamists, should they be expelled from Syria, would go someplace else. Perhaps Iraq. Perhaps Jordan. Perhaps Pakistan or Afghanistan or even Egypt or Libya or Nigeria. That's too long-term a kind of thinking. We need results in the short term.
Of course, while the real reason is geopolitical, the "real reason" (TM) for intervention is a very lofty one: the use of a weapon of mass destruction as weapon of miniscule destruction. Rather like using an A-bomb as a kinetic weapon, dropping the thing on a building not for the atomic explosion but to simply crush the building. We're outraged at the unconfirmed possibility of a thing whose name we hate being used in a way that isn't much different from a 500-lb bomb. More outrage over form than over substance. It's rather a brain disease these days, an analog of spongiform encephalopathy that affects thought structures instead of organic brain structures.
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