One narrative that’s parroted constantly when the US moves to bring about regime change in the Mid-East is that it’s necessary for the good of the people.

Typically, the citizenry is characterized as suffering under the brutal oppression of an autocratic regime which is sometimes accused of committing crimes against humanity in order to maintain an iron grip on power and ensure that the seeds of democracy cannot grow.

Of course this narrative is never wholly true and is rarely even partially so.

More often than not, the US has ulterior motives for covertly usurping Mid-East strongmen and the overarching goal is almost always to achieve some narrow geopolitical end.

This isn’t so much one fringe blog’s opinion as it is a dubious foreign policy tradition for Washington and indeed, it’s almost always readily observable in hindsight.

For those who need proof of this, we present the following before and after images of night-time light emissions in Syria:

Source: The Economist