Why do so many Middle Eastern nations, or Muslim majority nations in general...

Why do so many Middle Eastern nations, or Muslim majority nations in general, come under the control of brutal dictators? Dictatorships that repress freedoms, and practice religious persecution to such a high extent. Also why is it that whenever a country such as America wants to become involved, the world paints it as a war of imperialism or to get oil. But when a country such as Russia supports a dictator in Syria, then it's a war of freedom or liberation.

I'm not trying to make a political thread. I just seriously don't understand why the Middle East, and anything related to it, seems so different from a humanitarian stand point than any other region of the world.

I'm using this photo because people use this quote to show how the U.S. just wanted to become imperialist and go after oil. However, one thing people leave out is that either all of these countries were under a dictatorship, foreign invasion force that was controlled by a dictator, Lebanon, or absurdly corrupt, Somalia.

If we really wanted oil from the ME why wouldn't we just go after the Gulf Nations, do the people that say this type of thing forget that the U.S. military is stronger than all of them combined?

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Middle Eastern dictators are preferable to letting the people elect a "convert or die" religious nutter.
Turkey (earlier) and Egypt (as of late) have proven that a strong guide is needed to secularize and modernize a country and their militaries have been the safeguards of their democracy.
The US has a horrible track record, they topple dictators and have nothing to fill the power vacuum, and prolonged military oversight is costly and unpopular, both with the occupied people and at home. Also, they only topple dictatorships who's interests are opposed to theirs (case in point, they're allied with the house of Saud), and that's where the imperialism part of the argument kicks in (comply or die).
Also, that's just a partial quote from Clark, that makes him out to be some tyrant, his full statement is that he saw plans in the Pentagon to do so.

No one is saying that Russia is leading a war of freedom or liberation in Syria. Not even Russia is saying that. It's "an intervention with the purpose of restoring the constitutional order in Syria and it's president". What they did say is that they liberated Palmyra (a city with incredibly rich history) from the Islamic state.

youtube.com/watch?v=chuEBOqA2ow
To understand the gravity of the war, watch this video. It's easy to destroy countries, rebuilding them is a different beast.

>implying secularization and modernization are good things

>But when a country such as Russia supports a dictator in Syria, then it's a war of freedom or liberation

I have never ever heard this narrative before. What media outlet says this except maybe RT? All I've heard is that Russia is just working on its sphere of influence.

I'm sure you'd love to be beheaded by the Mujahideen

Because penis envy is a big thing on the Internet. In reality most people like the USA and dislike Russia. Sometimes blindly so.

Anyway, I think people are just discovering that there's no easy solution to the Middle East. Propping up dictators in the "hard man making hard decisions" strategy obviously backfired when the inevitable happened and those dictatorships became hilariously unpopular and corrupt, needing little to completely blow up. Iran in 1979 is the most obvious example of this, but there are others. For example, Syria was poorer than most of Sub-Saharan Africa even before the Civil War (while its neighbors were much better off despite not having Syria's oil reserves) and was pushed into it by a rise in food prices that quickly ballooned into a much worse event due to deep-seated tensions and government incompetence in the response to the crisis (contrast Tunisia). Iraq had decent living standards due to the money machine called oil, but corruption was endemic and the government killed hundreds of thousands of its citizens and started a war that killed a million people. And so on.

So when the Arab Spring occurred a lot of people were optimistic. When the Egyptians overthrew their dictator, many in the West cheered. But then it quickly became apparent why previous governments backed dictators in the first place: they're considerably more liberal than most of their population. Egypt, one of the most well off Arab countries, immediately voted Islamists into office and insurgencies started sprouting up around the country. Turns out that the dream of a liberal secular free democracy in the Arab World is an oxymoron when 75% of the population believes apostates should be stoned to death and 95% believes the Jews must be wiped out. And a significant fraction, though no one bothered to poll for this, also think that other tribes in their country they don't like should be wiped out. See also Shia Iraq's persecution of Sunnis.

cont.

Basically: at the core of it, you can have a democratic government or you can have a liberal secular one. You can't have both. The ideal solution would be a benevolent and competent dictatorship, but these are extremely rare finds and can't be relied upon. An Ataturk only shows up every hundred years.

Back to Russia one last time, you probably just spend too much time on Veeky Forums, which is full of Neo-Nazis and proven paid Russian shills. The majority of the world doesn't also believe the Holocaust didn't happen. Or that the US has been ignoring IS while Russia has been fighting it despite every objective indication of the opposite (looking at a map could have told you that). Or that Al-Qaeda is a US proxy. Or that the CIA is responsible for the war in Ukraine. Or that the eastern NATO states only hate Russia because of American brainwashing. I don't think even the Russians believe all that, just like I don't think the Americans actually believe the Paris attacks were funded by the Russian government just because Radio Free Europe (American RT) said it.

>that quote
s-source? when/where/why/context?

I agree with you.
However, i think that liberalism should not be imposed as it is now. It's actually cynical to impose liberalism. I believe that in the middle east specifically the government should not fight what the population believes, rather it should strive to explain the benefits of human rights (etc), to show the people that what they're doing is in their interest.
I think the west doesn't understand that.I often see the media/politicians/ngo-s/eu technocrats appalled by the views of the people. And by far the worst offender is Radio Free Europe. It's beyond cancer. How do you expect someone to accept what you preach when you constantly demonize them. I've gotten this impression by following RFE Balkans. They use every chance to bash the Serbs, and then wonder why so many Serbs hate them and why support for the EU is dwindling. Also, on the off chance they criticize say Croatia, just like Serbs, Croats crawl out of the woodworks and lynch RFE and the west as Serbloving destroyers of Croatia.
They don't present solutions, they don't present the benefit. And they don't understand that pushing people leads people to push back.

>If we really wanted oil from the ME why wouldn't we just go after the Gulf Nations
Because we really want oil from the ME(at a relatively low and stable price), we have a special deal with the largest oil producer in the world. We help them fuck up their enemies(Syria, Iran) and defend them if they are attacked(e.g. the skirmish at Khafji), and in exchange they and their Gulf buddies only do oil trades in US Dollars, enhancing the Dollar's stature as a global reserve currency. This essentially enables us to get away with inflationary policies without actually suffering big inflation.
Look up the Bretton Woods conference

Making deals is cheaper and easier than going in and taking over.