Assad: We'll give up chemical weapons once U.S. stops arming rebels

[orenbus]

48. They should be allowed to choose their fate, but the better question is should we be involved?

Nope I wouldn't go so far as to say what you are saying, however I think what was being pointed out is that democratic free and fair elections does not necessarily result in a moral society as we define it, that is a naive view of the world that elections will solve everyone's problems.

If they were to hold elections most likely the radical element that would be much more organized than the moderates for example in the case of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt would end up taking over the government. Now some of us in this country would see the Egypt military stepping in, in that case being a Coup d'état, and that regardless the leaders fairly elected should be able to run their country as they see fit. Would we be okay then funding rebels that will eventually want to implement Sharia law in Syria as is the case in both our alleged enemy of Iran or our ally of Saudi Arabia where things such as women rights or minority thinking or those that would not want to follow Sharia law would be punished with the most extreme practices? What would the women of that country and the Christians and other religious minorities that would be persecuted by a government that we helped establish through American dollars buying guns and ammo to help form an oppressive government think of us, would they see us as their saviors or as devils?

What it boils down to is that the middle east is a complicated place and even though we have our righteous ideas of how people should live and we try to force people to live like us, they tend to disagree and large of amounts of money we spend and American lives lost in the process generally do not end up producing the results we expect in that part of the world for various reasons. Some would also argue is our continued involvement in that part of the world generates hatred for the United States as civilians get caught in the crossfire and peoples that would normally fight each other look to us as a greater threat to their families not as a solution, some would further say that ends up radicalizing groups to want to commit to terrorism against our country as in the case of 9/11. Unfortunately the reality is that the road to hell is paved with the stones of good intentions.