Many are confused by the senseless wars now spreading like wildfire throughout the Arab region. Some think that these conflicts have deep-rooted internal causes, such as the tension between Islamists and liberals. Others look at these conflicts from a sectarian and ethnic perspective and consider them rooted in fundamental disputes between religious or sectarian ideologies or between tribes and provincial regions. There is yet a third group that sees this as a crisis of old regimes that want to forestall the political changes initiated by the Arab revolutions and the foreign interventions that caused chaos in the region. There is…