Quote Originally Posted by Bob's World View Post
You ask:

"Where and when in this conflict have we been attacked by an insurgent populace resisting a Western-supported regime? "

The first World Trade Center attack; the USS Cole, the Embassy bombings, 9/11; all of the foreign figher attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan; etc, etc, etc.
I can't see any of these as the acts of an insurgent populace. A few highly radicalized individuals, yes, but that's not the same thing.

Certainly one could cite attacks on US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan conducted by Iraqis and Afghans as the acts of an insurgent populace, but attacks by foreign fighters? Again, the acts of a small number of highly radicalized individuals.

Quote Originally Posted by Bob's World View Post
To make matters worse, the despotic governments that these insurgencies are struggling to affect now come to the US with hat in hand as great allies, and ask for money and weapons to use against their own people in the name of "combatting terrorism;" and we laud them as great allies...
I can't quite see the Saudis, for one, coming to the US with hat in hand asking for favors... more the other way around. There is dependency in that equation, certainly, but it ain't them depending on us.

Quote Originally Posted by Bob's World View Post
We are being played, and we allow ourselves to be played because we fear the economic impact that breaking relations with these countries could cause to our economy. Ironic. Supporting them has trashed our economy even worse that what we feared would happen if we did not support them.
I'm not sure this equation makes sense to me... who is "playing" us, and how? How has supporting anyone in the ME "trashed our economy"? We did that all by ourselves, I'd say.

Quote Originally Posted by Bob's World View Post
As to having the capacity to "fix" Yemen. Not our job. We don't need to fix these guys, we need to give them some tough love and stop supporting their destructive behavior and demand that they either begin addressing the concerns of their popualces with our help, or ignore them and deal with the results on their own.
I'm not convinced that they have the capacity to address the concerns of the populace, and I don't think any amount of tough love from us or anyone is likely to create that capacity in less than a generation or two. Certainly we can ignore them, but if the place degenerates into chaos and turns into another Somalia it will be difficult to ignore. I can't say I'm entirely comfortable with the short term choices that have been made, but neither am I sure that I've anything better to offer.