Sometimes there is nothing to be done that won't make things worse.

The massacres that have taken place in Syria are a nightmare. But military intervention is virtually certain to cause far far more deaths, and even worse massacres can be expected in its wake.

In Libya, which was a far far less complicated situation, the number of people killed by the air war was far higher than the numbers killed in Gaddaffi's repression. It's not a good time for the Tuareg minority.

The Saudi regime isn't supplying arms to the insurgents because it beieves in democracy, or has any particular reluctance to carry out brutal repression itself.