[cloudmountain]

The folks over there have been fighting ever since there have been "folks over there."
They have fought over the four scarce resources: money, power, status and fame.
The fights over water or women reflected their resources of how many men they could get to a fight.
Now they don't fight because our good Lord gave so many of the Arabs BLACK gold, Texas tea and they can BUY the world.

My husband and I were in Saudi Arabia in the early 1980's when Bashar's daddy, Hafiz, was in power. There was NEVER a nanosecond when the TOURISTS were EVER in a moment's danger.

Tourists were safer there than they were on the streets of New York. WHY?? BECAUSE most of those "fighters" had some brother-in-law who owned a shop in Damascus and NEEDED the tourists.
The Assad family wasn't stupid; it was just being what it and the rest of the families over there have been since there WERE families over there.

[Leaning Right]

They have fought over the four scarce resources: money, power, status and fame.

Yes. And "compassion" and "restraint" are not on their list of things to be admired. That's something both Bushes never quite understood. Both of them stopped short of going for an all-out victory. And in both cases that was interpreted as a weakness, something to be exploited.