I'm sure there were incentives to the general by the west as well.
I really don't think so. Let's see who Turks, led by Ataturk, fought off after the Ottoman Empire lost WWI, in order to found Turkish Republic: English, Australians, Italians, Greeks, French. There might be others, but it's been a long time since I researched that period. Basically, they fought the winners of WWI, and those were pretty much all the "west" there was, except Germany, who lost the war along with the Ottoman Empire.
A democracy is a better trading partner, and a better risk for loaning money
Not sure if that's the most important decision factor when you can choose to be a dictator or just a politician in a democracy who may or may not be elected.
Saddam took 200 billion of the world's money in loans, and those loans are now worthless.
Not really. Taking a dictator down, or changing any regime, does not remove the obligations of a country to pay back the loans it accumulated under its previous ruler(s). If that were the case, heavily indebted countries would perform a quick regime change to zero their debt all of a sudden. It doesn't work that way.
Yes, US is trying to get debtor countries like France and Russia to call it quits. I highly doubt they will, though.
The tradition in many Muslim countries is dictatorship. Follows right along with the religious leadership and heirarchy</I.
There is a good article here about governance traditions of the Middle East. Anyone who aspires to install democracy into a country in the region should know at least as much as the writer of that article. I tried to find it now but couldn't. I will post it later if I can.
One of its observations was that in the Middle East, the system of governance is invariably one of consensus-building. Leader gets to this position through a consensus of elders (ijma) and remains in power through the acquiescence of the community (umma). Leadership engages in open-ended negotiation with dominant men representing the main branches of the clan. They discuss problems, reach compromises, and in return, all swear personal loyalty to the leader.
Compare this to the idea that someone who wins 54% of the vote in an election should get 100% of the power, while the person with 46% should get none. ME people find this system not only illogical but also dangerous - an invitation to civil unrest. Most ME people feel democracy is basically an unfortunate system whereby the majority imposes their will on the unhappy and unrepresented minority. This is the perception that needs to change for democracy to be installed, and frankly, I doubt if it can be done overnight.
I found a post where I had previously posted an excerpt from that article:
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