In terms of Iraq...but I guess it could apply to the process in Syria as well, bringing different actors together. In the case of Iraq, it's hard to say this but actually the situation is markedly better in that you have the semblance of a state, one that controls more territory arguably than the government does in Syria. It depends, of course, on how you look at this. Because we have the ability to change governments in Iraq, and Iraqis have the ability to elect new leaders, it gives us some political flexibility in a process that we are used to here in the west and can plug into, so to speak.
I think bringing people together is an excellent idea, and it's something that happens periodically, not only in the Middle East as a whole, going back to the peace process or even earlier, but in other aspects, and it's a good thing to bring people to the table. In all the 20-some years that I've been dealing with the Middle East and writing about it, I think actually that these efforts oftentimes are a process for a process's sake. What's missing oftentimes is the part of the story here of what creates necessity for each side to make real concessions.
One of the takeaways from living in the Middle East for a long time, or maybe from just getting a little older in general, is that I don't think people really change fundamentally unless they have to, and I think the same can be said of regimes and governments as well. People and governments don't change unless they're in a dilemma...a real choice between equal goods or the lesser of two evils. To get into the heart of your question about how to make this more effective, I think we can think about how we can create necessity here in the international community for different parties to make hard decisions. It's perhaps there that the full tool box of diplomacy as well as military force could be best used at certain key moments, rather than simply trying to bomb or degrade a group, and at the same time, as one of the previous guests had mentioned, bombing into areas that are full of civilians and making the situation that much worse.
I'm afraid in Syria and Iraq that's oftentimes what we're involved in, even though we're actually trying to defeat these groups that are diametrically opposed to our interests.