Good points, Dreamer!
I'll add that the reason they're willing to ship arms to those countries is to help the rebels protect themselves against the onorous actions of their leaders, as well as the criminal element, while denying us the same here at home.
And I'd have to disagree with that...
For instance in Libya, the majority of the "rebels" are actually Al-Qaeda, as confirmed by CIA and MI6 assets on the ground, and yet we are aiding, equipping, and "advising" them like they're our BFFs...
We are arming "rebels" in that region because of a half-century-long con game to build up the wealth of the Middle East, and then ransack it all back into the International Banking Cartels coffers, through engineered destabilization and intentional fomenting of "revolutions". Read Carroll Quigley and Lindsey Williams. It's all there in black and white, with copious footnotes and documentation.
If you think for one minute that the "revolutionaries" in Egypt, Libya, or Yemen are even considering a type of government even remotely resembling democracy, you are delusional--they want to set up tribal tyrannies, based on Taliban-type despotism like what happened in Afghanistan after the USSR was driven out in the 1980's...
If your idea of democracy is no elections, women and children viewed as property slightly less valuable than camels and cows, mass destruction of priceless cultural artifacts in the name of "cultural purity", forced female genital mutilation as a "religious sacrament", and capital punishment for women who are rape victims, then we must be using VERY different dictionaries...