[WyvernAK]

Turkey that required the military to all but sit on it for the better part of a century to even have a semblance at stability and is now that the army backed off sliding back into a slow spiral to theocracy.
Iran, that has the Revolutionary guard all but hand pick each new president? And spends its free time building ambassador of death unmanned drones and making statements that they will soon destroy Irsrial, the United States, Dilbert etc.

I do cheer on the democracy movements in Iran I think it will come to little, and just wait till they get the bomb.

And from your own point, the great powers have always tried to make changes in the middle east, you think they did anything within sanity distance of a good job? That right there should be held up for all time as the example of things made worse by meddling foreign powers.

[parisa]

From my personal perspective Turkey is precisely the exaample of foreign powers deciding to be on the side of moderates and secularism and democracy. The reason for that? Turkey is vital to Europe; it has a foot in Europe and therefore European political expediency has always dictated keeping Turkey "moderate" and secularist.

In the case of Iran I am obviously NOT talking about the islamist takeover of the country. What I was referring to was Iran before the islamist takeover. Iran under the Pahlavi dynasty which was striving to achieve secularism and democratic rule of law until the damnable machination of that wicked scumbag carter. Yes, foreign meddling have made a muck up of ME, but like it or not, foreign powers will ALWAYS remain entrenched in ME politics -- if not western powers, eastern powers, Russia and China.

My point is that the muddle we are in is not a natural phenomena, but there has been geo-political status quo designs in play. George W. after 9/11 realized VERY ASTUTELY and correctly that the western status quo -- I can give you my reasons for what and why the seemingly counter-productive status quo that the west had pursued until 9/11, but it's long -- was unproductive and even dangerous for the west and it had to change. ME could NOT remain islamist, fundamentalist, authoritarian, undemocratic dominated any longer, and he set about trying to end it -- his mistake perhaps was that he was too honest and overt about his plans and his enemies, both domestic, and international (yes, Europe included) who saw their interests, and their lucrative links with the despotic regimes endangered, revolted against him and his doctrine and killed it.

So, you see, GW had his heart in the right place -- he wanted to change the western status quo in ME to protect his country and in the process save ME, but he was defeated and that is a tragedy both the populations here AND are paying a price for.