Regime Change and its Unintended Consequences -- or have we forgotten arleady?
The last time we decided to effect regime change for the 'benefit' of a Middle Eastern country, it was Saddam Hussein. Now, Hussein was surely every bit as brutal a dictator as Bashar al Assad. But here's the thing: in removing Saddam, one of the unintended consequences was that we would up creating a geopolitical power vacuum in the region, which in turn resulted in Iran rushing in to fill the void, and becoming a major power-broker in the region in a way that it never had been previously. And horrible as both of these men are/were, the one thing they had in common was they both at least maintained a secular government in their respective countries, as opposed to a government by fundamentalist clerics. Syria, like Iraq, is a culturally complex country. And taking out Assad without having a clear idea what or who will replace him is, from the standpoint of U.S. security interests, sheer madness.