Prashant, you understood my intent perfectly

Submitted by Steve Klein (United States), Jan 10, 2017 at 10:55

As you wrote, 'the policy of removing (secular-leaning) brutal dictators from middle eastern and North African countries has not worked too well because the new regimes are even more brutal and follow the original Islamic principles'.

You are exactly right. Either fundamentalist Islamic regimes or chaos appears to reign in the absence of a secular-leaning dictator or strongman. I seem to recall in the early part of Bush's 'Operation Iraqi Freedom', Dr. Pipes suggested a (presumably Sunni) "strongman" could be installed in Saddam's stead.

President Bush and his people opted for democratization. We are seeing the consequences of that naive ideal.

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