How else can we deal with Middle Eastern despots and nutcases?

How should we deal with the new leaders of the Middle East, when eventually they emerge into the light? When the Tweets have changed from injunctions to rise up and establish democracy to something more along the lines of “Lock up the women shoot the poofs bomb the Jews lol”.

Whatever we do will be wrong. We attempted to form a relationship with the Tunisians, the Bahrainis, the Saudis, Mubarak and, hell, even Gaddafi, in the end – knowing all the while that they were to a greater or lesser extent corrupt despots. Now, as some of these tyrants are overthrown, the West is accused of having buttressed them; one dribbling idiot of a commentator, a Muslim who works for an extremely low circulation left-wing magazine and who once compared non-Muslims to “animals”, said on Question Time that Mubarak was “our” man – as if we had put him there, and sustained him there. We didn’t, and haven’t – but what are we meant to do?

The truth is we have attempted to form a relationship with almost every blood thirsty Islamic or Ba’athist nutcase who has taken power in the Middle East, even to the extent of cosying up to the Hamas fascists. The alternative is to have no relationship at all with these scumbags, which infantile leftist commentators would no doubt find equally dismissive and derogatory. Short of occupation, no government in the Middle East, with the possible exception of Israel (and I have one or two problems with THEM), will be remotely democratic, as we understand the term.