Do you think Assad is a dictator

@wildbill83 Do you mean kill all 17 million people in Syria, or all 411 million people of the entire middle east?

@ThatMusgraveWoman Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.

If they haven't been able to get their shit together and at least act civilized over the last 2000 years, they never will...

does no good to go in and overthrow their dictators and install a democracy, a few years later they just throw it away and go back to tribal/militant governorship...

@wildbill83 Syria was pretty civilised when the west was tribal, and Iraq was the centre of a very sophisticated society when Europe was a squabbling mess of rival tribes. They have been subjected to a long period of foreign domination: Arabs, Ottomans, French, British and now half the nations of the world are fighting over their lands. Perhaps leave them to find their own solution rather than mass murder on an unbelievably terrible scale?

@ThatMusgraveWoman [quote]Perhaps leave them to find their own solution[/quote]

Therein lies the problem. Their so called solution involves killing anyone who doesn't share their beliefs, locals and foreigners alike. And if they had the means, they actually would mass murder on an unbelievable scale.

They've been lucky so far that Israel isn't as petty and ignorant as they are, as Israel certainly has the means to do it...

@wildbill83 I'm not sure that you are correct. It is the west's interference that has caused much of the recent problems in the ME. Iraq, Libya and Syria were no threats to the West until we interfered. Likewise, it was the west that created the Taliban in Afghan.

@ThatMusgraveWoman spoken like someone whose never actually been there.... 🙄

@wildbill83 No, I've never been to Afghan. I was in Syria about ten years ago, and in Iraq in the 1980s. Fascinating places - were you ever there?