re: revolution
If democracy was so important to them, it was their job to start the revolution, not ours.
I can't believe you, or anyone else, is still saying stuff like this.
An uprising was attempted. The uprisers were annihilated, in the hundreds of thousands, and in the case of the Marsh Arabs, their entire ecosystem was deliberately destroyed.
Are you going to tell the remnants of those massacred people that they just didn't really try?
Hell, it's all so easy. The only reason the Jews had trouble with the Nazis is that they just didn't want freedom all that badly.
Maybe I should just drop you naked into a cage filled with starving lions, and then claim your only problem is that you just aren't fighting hard enough.