Quote Originally Posted by HitWithThe5 View Post
No. The west loves Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, those crackdowns were a success to their regimes.
Which can be explained by a lack of momentum for this unrest.

You are using the spring to convince yourself of Gaddafi's supposed unstable governance. In 60 years time you don't know what will happen. Gaddafi was a 70 year old guy and we don't know what his son would have done different. Gaddafi-style dictatorship may not have created an ideal Libya but it didn't break it. Whether you think Libya would have had another uprising 60 years from now or not doesn't matter, because that's the faulty premise and war of choice decision-making that started a civil war Qaddafi tried to prevent in the first place.
We know for a fact that an uprising did happen during Gaddafi's rule. We know for a fact that many other Arab countries with secular authoritarian governments also faced uprisings. We do not know for a fact that Gaddafi would have won the war without outside interference; this is merely a likely outcome.

When we look at history, we also see a repeating pattern of authoritarian governments facing massive uprisings. This is by no means a new phenomenon.

Since there is no way of doing this, than there is no possible justification for insisting on regime change when the regime offered what it had when it was losing.
This is the same regime/dictator that has been implicated in a major terrorist attack against the West. I don't see why any guarantees it provided should be trusted.

The single most powerful force that effectively muzzled and delegitimized these extremists was eliminated. Transformation to a peaceful democracy needed this very regime to pull it off.
Again, as far as I can see, the extremists are only in control of portions of the country. One of the main reasons they are controlling anything at all is because of the split of the country's leadership; which means it is difficult for other countries to help train an army capable of dealing with these extremists.