It should be readily apparent to anyone that secular dictators like Saddam Hussein, Assad, and others are/were the best case scenario for that part of the world. W. was incredibly naive to believe that people in that part of the world wanted "democracy" and "freedom."
I don't know how we're going to deal with them. I'm actually surprised Sydney and Paris style attacks haven't been more prevalent, because they're easy for the terrorists to pull off and they strike a chord of terror in a population unlike attacks on harder targets.