Syria Strikes

It remains to be seen whether the air strikes in Syria accomplish anything, probably not but maybe it will be some deterrence.

Thee is also no doubt that the regime in Syria is managing to survive unlike dictators in places like Libya and Egypt.

The so called Arab Spring didn't seem to result in a lot of democratic institutions springing up.

Certainly I don't think we see a lot of pro-Western governments.

Fundamentally, most Arabs support the Palestinians in the dispute with Israel and generally still oppose the existence of Israel itself.

Since we are clearly considered a main supporter of Israel we don't have a lot of friends in the region.

We also get blamed to some extent for stealing their oil wealth and of course for introducing wicked Western culture to many of their young people.

Back during the Bush administration their was a certain belief that removal of dictators like Saddam Hussein would lead to more democratic and therefore more Western friendly states.

We then saw some additional dictators eliminated during the Arab Spring where Egypt and Libya got rid of their dictators.  It looked a lot like Syria was going to be next, but it was not to be as the spread of Isis sort of killed that momentum.

Clearly with the support of Russia and Iran Syria's government looks safe and we are not engaged in trying to overturn it.

Outside of supporting Israel and opposing terrorist organizations we don't seem to have much of a policy there right now.

Of course that's pretty much par for this administration.