Don't Panic Quotes

“If there was no American prison in Iraq, there would be no Islamic State now.”
― Gwynne Dyer, Don't Panic: ISIS, Terror and Today's Middle East

“The appropriate course of action is to ensure the survival of the Syrian regime. Yes, Assad and his Ba’ath Party have done terrible things (as Stalin did), but they are still preferable to the alternative (as was the survival of the Soviet Union in 1941). The Assad regime’s cruelty and tyranny are comparable to Saddam Hussein’s record in Iraq but, at least in retrospect, it is clear that it would have been preferable to leave Saddam Hussein in power. Any reasonable observer would agree that Iraq would be a far better place, and that hundreds of thousands of people who died would still be alive, if the United States and its sidekicks had not invaded the country in 2003. The best of the bad options now is to leave Assad in power in Syria, although—horror of horrors!—that would mean the United States was helping a dictator.”
― Gwynne Dyer, Don't Panic: ISIS, Terror and Today's Middle East

“There’s not much risk that it will conquer Iraq’s Shia-majority region or Kurdistan, now that the first shock of its expansion up to their borders has passed, for both could count on strong Iranian military support if required. Syria is a more worrisome case, for a jihadi victory in Syria would bring Islamic State (and, in the north, perhaps also the Nusra emirate) right up to the borders of Lebanon and northern Israel. Millions more refugees would pour across the borders into Lebanon and Jordan (which have already taken in several million Syrian refugees), possibly with Islamist fighters in hot pursuit. This would create a high probability of a direct military confrontation with Israel, even if the Islamists would really prefer to concentrate on killing Shias first.”
― Gwynne Dyer, Don't Panic: ISIS, Terror and Today's Middle East

“Bombing people in the Middle East is something Western governments can do without incurring significant casualties on their own side, so it is politically safe and answers the public demand for action.”
― Gwynne Dyer, Don't Panic: ISIS, Terror and Today's Middle East