I mean, they've literally gone to war against both ISIS and Al-Qaeda. You don't have to trust them exactly but it's not like there's no grounds to believe they're at least not going to be ISIS.

I'm not sure why you think that means they aren't terrorists. Al-qaeda and ISIS have also been at war for a decade. Does that make one of them any less terrible than they have always been?

It's not about trust. We have enormous amounts of evidence from all human rights organizations monitoring the situation. You may not understand this but the entire war was filmed. You can just go look up who they are, what they believe and what they have done to people. They advertised it themselves for the majority of their career.

I said no such thing. I also wouldn't dispute that the PKK are also "terrorists".

I still think it's pretty clear that there can be some hierarchy within that category. HTS and the Kurds are less evil than the Taliban, which is less evil than Al-Qaeda, which is less evil than ISIS.

Like you said, there is plenty of history to look at here. HTS has run Idlib for years and they have done nothing that compares to the likes of ISIS. Maybe that will change if they consolidate total power, but neither of us have any evidence to state definitively what will happen. There are plenty of reasons to be either pessimistic or optimistic.

I misunderstood then. My bad.

> I still think it's pretty clear that there can be some hierarchy within that category. HTS and the Kurds are less evil than the Taliban, which is less evil than Al-Qaeda, which is less evil than ISIS.

This I can agree with for sure. There are lesser evils and a hierarchy. I think the hierarchy also depends on the situation on the ground for who it's tolerable to support at a specific time. If it would have taken HTS as much bloodshed to get to where they are today as it did Assad to originally regain control, then I think it would less favorable than what actually happened, for example.

"Soviet Union" means the Union of (16) Soviet Socialistic Republics. It's an abbreviation. The republics originally were parts of Russian Empire, so their status was raised, at least nominally.

Quite a few ex-soviet states, who were independent countries before being occupied by USSR, will not agree with this.

You understand what I mean. Nothing was run by soviets. Lenin stopped that immediately.