Dear Doug:

There are other ways to look at this.

The uprising in Syria was originally about a suppressed people seeking democracy, as in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya.

Several parts of that went unimaginably wrong.

First, the Arab spring failed in Egypt.
Nobody with power in the region wanted democracy in Egypt.  Not the Saudis. Not the oil companies.  Not the Egyptian Army.  Not Likud.  They didn't want the Arab Spring in the first place.

The Muslim brotherhood won the elections. But democracy was never their agenda.

So, instead of carefully building up democracy, and the economy, inch-by-inch, they impatiently set their priority on forcing through an Islamic Constitution.

It was incredibly stupid.

It unleashed the Saudi-funded, Likud-complicit, oil-company-desired counter-revolution.

It ended the possibility of western arms, support and funding - not only for democracy in Egypt, but everywhere else the Arab Spring might have taken root - especially Syria.