Certainly perception is relevant to policy, but perception management is a complicated and highly unpredictable business. Any given action can evoke a wide range of perceptions from varying actors, and any effort to declare that if "we" do this, "they" will perceive that is generally way oversimplified. As pointed out above, for example, the preferred agenda is not necessarily indicative of perceptions across the Middle East or even the Saudi populace: it's just what the Saudi royal family happens to want.
I actually think that the discussion of Syria strays a bit from the original topic, which involved the premise that US support for autocratic regimes enables those regimes to resist popular pressure for reform. That seems rather far from the discussion of Syria. The Saudi royal family may want the US to do the dirty work and get rid of Assad, but I doubt that the Saudi populace really cares that much. I suspect that for every person in the ME populace who wants the US to intervene and protect the Sunni, you'd find 5 who are generically opposed to any US intervention in ME affairs, but of course we don't know that. How much basis do any of us have, really, to be talking about what a foreign populace perceives?
As above, it's very easy to say "it's all about perception", but very difficult to accurately assess the range of perceptions that exists, and very difficult to predict how any given action or policy will be perceived.
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