Are democracy and western values really the answer for conflict countries?:
You can't export Democracy by force as it takes the will of the people to form such a government.  Muslim countries do not have the Enlightenment background we had in the nascent United States to form a secular Constitutional Republic.  Islam demands that church and state be as one with the rule of law coming from the Koran.  Despite the attempts by some right-wing conservative religious types, in America we have a wall of separation between religion and the government where a citizen can follow the dictate of his/her conscience.  Islam needs to go through their own Enlightenment before any type of western democracy will have a chance to succeed.  Until then we can only keep (weak) control by military force which sets up blowback as we now see in the Middle East.