There is a reason why historians refer to the Middle East as “the graveyard of empires”.
There are no real nations there. The governments are run like ‘Mafia-style’ family cliques; a head guy and his family dominates everyone else in the local area. Sometimes a “king” evolves and can convince enough of the local ‘Mafia-style’ families to join up and form a federation of sorts. But it is a very unstable way to govern and everyone is suspicious of everyone else. These relationships shift around like wind-blown sand. Double crosses are common; so are asassinations.
The worst thing Westerners can do is try to be someone’s ally. In the Middle East that is tantamount to seeking to overthrow one of the ‘Mafia-families’, and so they always deal “dishonestly” with Westerners. Trust is definitely missing in foreign relations when dealing with Arabs.
The people there are going to have to change from the inside. They are going to have to want to change, and the primary obstruction is Islam.
Your summation of "the way things are" in the mideast is spot-on, IMO. It was foolish of Bush to think that the mideast Muslims would welcome "freedom". To them, "freedom" means the right to Talibanism, Wahabbi-ism and 9-year old brides.
IMO, the Irag war was supposed to be about deposing Saddam because a loose cannon with WMD was not allowable in a post 9/11 world. After the statue of Saddam was pulled down, Bush should have had his "mission: accomplished" moment. The only nation-building we should have done would have been to install a kinder and gentler Shah of Iran type of government.
bingo
we used to say you (the US) can’t buy (the loyalty of) an arab, you can only rent one
just look at what is is now costing us to rent just Egypt
we (the West) are going to have to come with terms that some of our species are brutes who will be ruled by despots and who will live under genocide and casual acceptance of killing and murder (”honor” and “Martyrdom”)
we basically have to let them
However, when they come over here and kill us we have to respond and kill them back
But we MUST draw the line at letting them emigrate here and colonize their social and religious insanity among us while we “tolerate” it