CNN: ISIS Takes Libyan City.

[Ravenna44]

3. We didnt make it any better but

...but I gotta point out that it was pretty crappy in most of the middle east before we got there. We just didn't see the crap on our tv screens, because back then it was just foreign crap in some faraway place we didn't know or care about.

Qaddafi: insane dictator. Very big on rape and murder. Lots of his people rose up and fought to get rid of him. The militias have been fighting over the spoils ever since - long before iSIS came along. "We" are not the problem.

Hussein: sane but still a dictator. Though kinda secular, so he didnt destroy civil society too badly (just killed anyone who disagreed with him.) Didn't the locals cheer when the US first toppled him?
Assad: Possibly insane dictator (it's hard to tell if someone is pulling his strings). Plenty of his people are fighting to oust him. I have family from Syria, and they were very glad when the war ignited. Though Less glad now.

So lets please share the blame out equally. The people there do have agency ya know - they are not passively being acted upon like children. They are out there forming governments, armies, allegiances. They are choosing religious beliefs; they have built their own cultures along certain lines. I know we all agree that the Iraq invasion should never have happened. But I am bothered by the constant drone of "all that goes wrong in the ME is because of American meddling.". I think it patronizes the breathing thinking choice-making people who live there.