Re: Syria slams US-led coalition deadly strike against troops as 'act of aggression'
See, I don't understand why we have to go from "totally disinterested" to regime changing everybody and creating the level of turmoil that we have there now. That's just a bit absurd. It's one thing to make economic alliances and trade partners, negotiate and strike the best bargain. Maintain embassies for all those reasons. But it's just a simple fact that Hussein, Mubarak, Gaddafi and Assad were the containment to Islamic extremists. Those guys gave no quarters to them. They had to operate in the shadows, which denied them the ability to organize, train and grow to the menacing force they are now. Only the most ardent patronizing Americans still vigorously support our failed policies in the ME. Even Ted Cruz now says we should leave Assad as that's best for US national security, and that we should have left Hussein, Mubarak and Gaddafi as well. And of course, both British and US intelligence services reported sometime ago that the invasion and occupation of Iraq has caused increased terror and made the world less safe. Look, either we've had several decades of incompetence in our White House or the destabilization of the ME is by design, as General Wesley Clark reported. Neither of which is encouraging.
There's a larger context to chaos in the Middle East than American acts of interference, which are often little more than droplets of water in a storming sea.
However, the reason why the State Department is desperate to effect regime change because the regimes of the Middle East can't continue to exist without becoming more and more authoritarian in order to cope with the escalating threats of what I'll call the 21st century's "cyberpunk" future. After all, cell phones and social media pretty much overthrew Mubarak. On one hand this will enable them to repress terrorists that threaten the West, but it will also allow an Alawite minority in Syria to monopolize state revenues and the choicest private and public sector opportunities at the expense of the other ethnic and tribal inhabitants of the Syria region.
The United States can maintain relations with these countries if they maintain a semblance of human rights and democracy, but not if they go full Stalin on their non-mainstream ethnic and religious populations. Partly because contrary to popular belief, the United States government must respond to the interests of parties favorable to human rights and democracy, if only because those conditions create better climates for business than Stalinist regimes that repress innovation (because they don't want new industries to displace the power and cultural influence of state sponsored ones) and foreign ideas. North Korea is the far end logical result of these policies, and is pretty much can't cooperate economically with any country.
For decades the State Department has operated under the assumption (delusional hope) that Middle East countries with whom it has stable relations would gradually democratize in the same way South Korea, Japan, and West Germany did. The development of middle classes would naturally spur the formation of democracy as masses empowered by wealth seek greater voice in political forums once dominated by tribal Sheiks.
The problem is the Middle East's middle classes
in and of themselves belong wholly to the dominant ethnic groups/tribes of a given country. Syria's middle class is all Alawite, all the way, for example. They are willing to have a dictator that shares their ethnicity in charge, since such a dictator is going to empower the Alawite population in anyway he can in order to maintain his hegemony over the other ethnic groups.
That sort of tribal situation didn't exist in Germany, Japan, and South Korea, so gradual democratization is impossible. That leaves us with the sort of upheaval and growing pains France went through during the decades spanning French Revolutions of the 19th century and the formation of various republics.
The topic is not each other or other threads. Knock off the snarking at each other.