The less Arab revolutions were stomped on, the more favorable was the outcome. The progression from Tunisa through Egypt and Lybia to Syria is quite evident.
What's really surreal is so many people in the (still relatively free) West denying basic agency to their fellow human beings in the Middle East.
> so many people in the (still relatively free) West denying basic agency to their fellow human beings
Because there's a lot of cynicism with charities and foreign aid. There is an active campaign here in Britain to reduce the latter and anecdotally, I have friends and relatives who refuse to donate to aid agencies because they believe that the whole thing is a sham.
Sure there's bureaucracy, but most of them are genuinely hardworking and already operating on shoestring budgets...
You could point them to clearinghouses like CharityNavigator [0] (which is probably US-centric) that rate the charities on things like how much of their donations go to administration.
The short of it is that one can donate to Oxfam, Save the Children or Medecins san Frontieres and remain confident that >95% of funds raised go to direct relief efforts.
For example the view professed here by you and the GP, that Arabs should have quietly suffered in their dictatorship without right to dissent, is denying the agency.
God I agree, can you imagine how Ethan Allen would be covered today? I don't know enough to have a side in the Syria conflict, but man, the Green Mountain Boys weren't so far off from a lot of modern non-state actors.
Google tells me he's a furniture store these days.
(I'm a Brit, so my knowledge of the American Revolution is cobbled together from popular media, Sid Meier's Colonization, Wikipedia, anti-colonialist literature, and a trip to Boston. The latter led me to believe it was mostly about lobsters. This may or may not be more accurate than what's taught in US schools)
What's really surreal is so many people in the (still relatively free) West denying basic agency to their fellow human beings in the Middle East.