The plight of the Assyrian Christians is pretty cut and dry. If ISIS wins, they get massacred or run out, and their culture dates back 2000 years to the founding of the Christian religion. It is bad form to let them out hanging in the midst of that much enemy activity.

Their history is a bit spotty in recent decades, but it's not like they had a whole lot of choices in the matter. They had attached themselves to the military and government jobs during the Saddam and Assad eras. Apparently later made their peace with the Kurds during the US occupation era.

The Kurds had unofficially been their own country for a long time, and the IS do have a point of the colonial Syria/Iraq borders being irrelevant to the local populations. That's not how the real borders are going to be ending up no matter how this thing goes.

As for volunteers going over, I am all for it, same as those going with that Machinegun preacher guy in Africa or the Karen tribes in northern Thailand/Burma. I could see myself in a 1st Sgt type role in some of that. Handling logistics, PR, recruitment supply, and getting people into and out of the fight as needed.