What’s missing in all the frenzied reporting, posts and conversations is the sorry fact that Syria is getting carved up by different powers and peoples and puppets. I am not Syrian and have no special affinity toward that country or its authoritarian for-life president.

But I do want to point out that it’s foreign meddling in the Middle East that has caused most of its current issues. After WWI the French and English carved out the region without any comprehension as to how borders, if any at all, make sense. The negative impacts of that gross interference in the region reverberates to this day.

Unless we are all in, like the Ottomans and before them Arab Muslim empires and Persian and Byzantium empires, we should stay out and keep others out too (such as Russia). Left to their own devices, Middle Easterners will find peace and prosperity.