insufficient respect

Cockburn on Syria: Prejudice offered up as wisdom
"Patrick Cockburn knows he can't depend on understatement to soft-pedal Assad, so he offers up what aspires to be an impressive version of "this is a great big mess". Of course the underlying message is that the West ought to stay out of the great big mess, and it will be a disastrous to arm the rebels. This disingenuous pessimism is made plausible and respectable by standard techniques flaunting purported authority and expertise.
For that matter, not even Assad in an Iranian proxy. The Iranians are cruel and calculating, but they are not idiots. They don't go in for sectarian massacres and they don't delight in shabiha gangs running amok on steroids and booze, flaunting their syrupy Assad tattoos. Hizbollah, disciplined and judicious, is more Iran's idea of a proxy.
As for the rest of the area, it's a lark for Israel, not at all dangerous for Jordan and Turkey, and more of the same for Iraq, where Shia-Sunni violence never stopped. As for Lebanon, since the Christians and Druze so far are absolutely out of the picture, there's real danger, but hardly anything like an Iraqi-level conflagration.
The Syria conflict may indeed ignite the whole region. China may invade Taiwan, the Philippines and Vietnam. Or maybe Syria and Lebanon are about to get past violent repression and enter into a brighter future. Anything is possible, but invoking mere possibilities shouldn't pass for analysis."