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Mr. Fallon could not be more wrong. What has made Syria more dangerous is not Russian intervention now but western intervention for the past several years. ISIL is not the product of President Assad's unjust regime but of that western intervention in Iraq. In the supposed interest of bringing safety and stability to the people of these countries the west opened Pandora's Box by opposing their quasi-dictators, only to find inside that without the extremely efficient suppression of potentially violent opponents, those opponents would soon enough become violent opponents of everyone but themselves and very uninterested in the safety and stability of their fellow citizens. Iraq may now have an elected government, but not one committed to the values of liberal democracy because those values are western, not Arab and because bribery, corruption and tribalism are all possible behind a democratic facade. I do not for one moment condone dictatorships as preferable to democracy, nor the violent suppression of dissent. What I do say is that exactly the same methods will be employed by whoever replaces the dictatorships, and when Assad's regime is brought under review it is patently obvious that people were able to live in peace and stability with dissenting opinions and religions as long as they did not seek the overthrow of the regime. It may not be fair, but it is better than a whole country being dismantled and destroyed in the pursuit of a political mirage of western democracy in a culturally Muslim society.

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