Living a revolution can be terrible. Living under tyranny is even worse. Pick your poison.

Why don't you let the locals make that decision for themselves?

Haven't they very blatantly been making that decision in Belarus, in favor of changing the status quo? What were the protests about, why did so many put their necks on the line? The question is whether the West should help them or not, how and to what degree. The decision to go against the regime has clearly already been made by large numbers of people in Belarus.

How do you know how deep the support for regime change is in Minsk? I mean, using primary sources.

It's easy to fill a plaza with people. And Minsk's regime is terrible. But I was duped into supporting the Iraq war in '03. with the promise that we'd be greeted as liberators. I remember the young men shaving their beards in Kandahar. Look how those turned out.

I'm not making that mistake again.