I thank you for your extensive reply and explanation. I'm glad (but not surprised) to see that we are on the same page with a lot of things. And yes, I meant Eva Bartlett. I simply don't know enough about Sarah to be able to know for sure what her motives are. I thank you for pointing this out to me, so I can investigate further. That being said, I believe she has valid points with this post, aside from what else she might do and say. I also know too little about the Kurdish issues. When I lived in Holland, I had friends who were originally from Turkey so I really only heard their side of the story. That being said, they never told me or anyone that they hated the Kurdish people though simply because they were too young to really know much about it themselves and had never really lived in Turkey to be able to judge what they were told. I absolutely agree: to these leaders, any leaders (or most of them) the A word is a no no. I believe this also falls in line with our stories here on Steemit for the question of the week this week. Patriarchy in its ugliest form. The fear of loss of control and power also brings these people together. I haven't formed a 100% picture about Assad either, to be honest, when I try to judge a person, I usually firstly go by gut feelings and instinct. Most of the time I feel I'm a good judge of character, but this is of course much harder to do if you don't actually meet the man in person. All I have to go by is body language, eye contact with others and gestures etc. (I did some training in that respect for crazy reasons but I won't waste too much time on that here and now). And in regards to Assad and his adviser for instance (not sure if that's who he was, but I thought he was) I felt that these men were definitely not the villains they were made out to be. That being said: I had a personal experience lately where I thought I knew someone in and out and this person managed to betray my trust in the most horrible way, so I am the last person to say that I get it right all the time....I know I had it right with Obama (when the first time I saw him on TV my first thoughts were that he was bad, bad news). But that aside. And even though I agree with you that leaders would take each others sides if something like the people taking control could become and issue, I also still want to believe that there is still good in some of those leaders. That not all are completely evil and that we do create our own reality by immediately believing that they have to be just like any other villain and be suspicious of everyone's motives. As far as it goes about Sarah, like I said: I don't know enough about her. But I also want to think there might be reasons why she says the things she says. It is surely led by emotions that came from somewhere. It is very hard to know for sure if you don't know the person. I was watching this video the other day about a Palestinian blogger/journalist in Israel. This Orthodox Jewish man asked him what he was doing and where he was from. He then told his 15 year old sister about this blogger. This 15 year old immediately said that he was evil and that ALL Palestinians were evil. Him and her brother tried to talk to her to change her mind, saying that not every Palestinian is evil, just like not every jew isn't and that most actually want peace. I think this was a great example to show how emotions can get anyone to think something very strongly when this might not be the case at all. She got this information from TV. It is usually TV, mixed with emotions that create hate like that. Not knowledge. Had she known and seen that there are actually Palestinians and Jews who can live together in harmony and don't want these fights at all, she might have had different views. I think if you are closer to the front lines and see only destruction, it is very hard to keep a clear and non-opinionated mind about things.