Syria would not be a war zone if we hadn't used much more "effective" measurements in Iraq before. I do not know what to say to people, who at this point still think, that our military can somehow bring peace to the middle-east after decades of war, thinking "this time is different".

Why don't we invade Saudi Arabia, who practices a cruel form of Islam with death-sentences and so on, too? Why don't we abolish them in China or the US? Why don't we focus on Africa or - as a European - Eastern Europe? I am not saying, that ISIS is not bad, I just find the obsession with the Middle East strange, if it is really about their actions that are so horrible, let's stop doing them ourselves first. If you really want to make the world a better place, that should be a much easier goal to achieve.

The French position in 2002 may have been a bit cynical but would probably have saved lots of life: Saddam Hussein may be a scum-bag but at least he was holding the country together and keeping Sunni and Shia from killing each others. Same for Gaddafi, Al Assad, Ben Ali, etc. That being said all dictators fall or die sooner or later, and a lot of the troubles in the middle-east have more to do about ethnic hatred than about religious extremism. We could possibly have delayed it but perhaps not prevented it.