No I never said that. Everything I wrote was contradicting Sergarr's ideas that we should basically economically flatten the whole place and turn it into colonies. Everything I wrote was historical, and pointing out how doing things with those sorts of intent is part of what's caused and is causing the problems.
Intervention to help build institutions is a different matter. But e.g. if we left Assad's Bureaucracy in place, then it would be much eaiser to pressure them into opening up elections rather than trying to topple society itself and rely on grass-roots types to rebuild everything, French Revolution style.
I mean think about it. Washington has a lot of problems, but d'ya think literally nuking Washington then letting the states duke it out over who's in charge is a good idea? That's basically been our middle east policy since at least Bush. There's actually a reason previous administrations basically refrained from utterly destroying governments even in hostile nations that could easily have been taken out. They knew the results are likely to be worse than leaving someone in charge that you can actually talk to.
I mean, nobody likes Assad. But the idea that having his state socialist administration continue on is worse than basically setting fire to the whole country is nonsense. The Russians are actually on the right side here. They want stability first, because then at least you've got a rational state actor who you can negotiate with and put pressure on to make concessions. The problem is that rather than militarily toppling e.g. Ghadaffi, who is an old man, then relying on grass-roots to rebuild everything (guaranteed death and chaos) you could have left his administration and civil institutions in existence, but have heavily pressured his administration to open up reforms after his death. it's not like Ghaddafi was an undead lich.