I’m in that same boat. When we were invading Iraq, I had just read Natan Sharansky’s The Case for Democracy - The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror. I really believed Iraqis could be led to repudiate Saddam and embrace Western ideas per his book.
I know better now.
Imagine NOT wanting freedom!!
We who would DIE for it rather than live without it!
Unless there was somehow a massive fundamental shift in beliefs and faith, (which will always be brutile and bloody) to a belief which embraces living by love, grace, forgiveness, and individual liberty (which equals individual responsibility) - as a general rule, Islamic societies could only ever be “ruled” from the top down, and or by equally violent Marxist type dictators, striking real fear into the hearts of the same society .