The Syrian Government vs the Muslim Brotherhood
As I said, this is not something we want to get into the middle of. For what it is worth. Bashar al-Assad holds a medical degree and was practicing opthamology when he was called home to take the reigns. (His older brother was the presumptive heir but died in a car crash. Pick your muscle mystics and Attilas with care, but to me, the guy is just a secular militarist whose only goal is to hold his country together and right now, he needs both hands. It's his problem, not ours, of course.)
Read about the XYZ Affair. We all love Thomas Jefferson (at least as much as he loved Sally Hemings), but in his own time, conservative people distrusted him. In buying the Port of New Orleans, Jefferson not only paid $11 million in gold to France, but also forgave $3.75 million in French national debt to the USA. While the USA did fight an undeclared war against revolutionary France, the declared war was the War of 1812 when Napoleon was desperate.
We easily dislike the Federalists for their mercantilist economic policies, but culturally they probably have more in common with us as the Producers of Property in their time.
As events in Syria unfold, the future may see Barack Obama as the Arab President, supporting revolutionary Islam and radical Muslim elements. I suggest that if you have time for fiction, you try WHEN GRAVITY FAILS by George Alec Effinger: It is a cyberpunk world of Islamic culture.
According to Wki...
The Louisiana territory encompassed all or part of 15 present U.S. states and two Canadian provinces. The land purchased contained all of present-day Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska; parts of Minnesota that were west of the Mississippi River; most of North Dakota; most of South Dakota; northeastern New Mexico; northern Texas; the portions of Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado east of the Continental Divide; Louisiana west of the Mississippi River, including the city of New Orleans; and small portions of land that would eventually become part of the Canadian provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louisiana_...
It was a little bit more than the port of New Orleans, like 828,000 square miles.
In May 2013, 700 domains registered by Syrians, mostly hosted at servers with IP addresses assigned to the Syrian Computer Society,[3] were reported to have been seized by the U.S. DNS infrastructure operator Network Solutions.[2] The domain names were marked as "OFAC Holding", believed to be a reference to the U.S. federal government's Office of Foreign Assets Control.[3]"
1^ Alterman, Jon B. (1998). "New Media New Politics?". The Washington Institute 48. Retrieved 7 April 2013.
2^ a b Sean Gallagher (May 8 2013). "Network Solutions seizes over 700 domains registered to Syrians". Ars Technica. Retrieved 2013-05-09.
3^ a b "Trade Sanctions Cited in Hundreds of Syrian Domain Seizures". Krebs on Security. 8 May 2013. Retrieved 2013-05-09.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrian_Comp...
"The Battle of Maysalun, also called The Battle of Maysalun Pass, took place between Syrian and French forces some 12 miles west of Damascus on July 23, 1920. The battle occurred when the French moved to topple the newly proclaimed nationalist government of Hashim al-Atassi under King Faisal. An independent Kingdom of Syria had recently been proclaimed after an Arab army led by British colonel T. E. Lawrence defeated the Ottomans and captured Damascus. However .... "
http://www.war-memorial.net/Franco-Syria...